Less noise is appreciated more these days than in earlier stages of life.
Ballgames are watched with the volume muted. It’s easy to tell what’s happening and one can only bear hearing “physicality” so many times.
Welcome, the sound of silence.
Quiet spots are now favored over loud ones. Restaurants are judged on food, service and volume.
And I want to hear the soft sound of birds, not overhear someone else’s blaring podcast, when on a hiking trail.
Yet silence is not always the faithful choice — especially when it comes to speaking up for truth, justice and the other ways of Jesus.
“There is a time for everything…,” we’re told in Ecclesiastes 3, including “a time to be silent and a time to speak.”
However, the ancient writer doesn’t tell us how to discern those times. But we can reasonably figure out how when a situation calls for speaking up — and we are living in such a time.
Remaining quiet in the face of growing, daily acts of evil enacted by our own government — war crimes, murder, sexual abuse coverups, wholesale lies and more — is unfaithfulness.
As the early Christians in Ephesus were instructed, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” (Ephesians 5:11)
Speaking on behalf of the vulnerable rather than in defense of abusive powers is not warmly welcomed. The prophets of old and Jesus himself could testify to that reality.
All around us are the politically driven, religiously pious who would have eagerly helped drive the nails into the body and cross.
Today there is significant social pressure — especially from those who claim Christianity but empower values fully at odds with Jesus’ life, teachings and calling —to silence anyone who exposes even the most obvious evil.
The favored silencing techniques are: “Don’t judge.” “Don’t be political.” “Both sides… yap, yap, yap.”
They want to suspend reality by quickly telling us that we are not seeing what we are clearly seeing. It can be helpful to know their words serve as a defense mechanism to justify their own misdirected loyalties and to avoid the humility of admitting being on the wrong side of truth and goodness.
Speaking up against evil, however, is a faithful response of a Jesus follower — especially when doing so on behalf of those who have no voice and experience the brunt of selective and abusive government overreach.
“Shut up and go along” wasn’t helpful in the face of earlier overt racial discrimination, even slavery, and isn’t now when fascist-leaning leaders hold the reins of power. Being quietly nice in the face of growing acts of evil isn’t a virtue.
Not everyone is wired for speaking up. And some of us, as we age, prefer less noise overall than we once enjoyed.
Silence certainly has its place. And speaking authoritatively about every matter than arises is more annoying that prophetic.
However, there are hostilities toward vulnerable people — as we see now and choose not to ignore or misrepresent— that call for standing up and speaking truth to power.
History reveals the vast toll on humanity when evil continues due to silence. My promise to God is not to be counted among those who enable, even empower, such evil acts with my silence simply to avoid criticism from those who choose to do so.
Surely one of the times to speak rather than be silent is when those Jesus clearly identified as our neighbors to be loved are demonized and harmed by insecure, racist powermongers masquerading as God’s chosen leaders.
We’ve seen and heard that before from the Confederacy, the Nazis and the Klan.
At such times, faithfulness requires a sound unlike silence.
John D. Pierce is director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative (jesusworldview.org), part of Belmont University’s Rev. Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership. Please mark October 12-14, 2026 for the second “Life Through a Jesus Lens” gathering in Nashville.