Silence is Malpractice
I asked a co-worker of mine to please come guest lecture for one of my classes. The class is called Media Listening & Interviewing. I asked him to come because he has experience covering wars… and with everything happening in the world I thought it would be a good idea to turn this into a teaching moment for my students. (Since he doesn’t know I’m writing this, I’ll keep specific names out of this post.)
He spoke about covering war in the country where he is from…. specifically referencing witnessing the aftermath of a massacre that took place in a church. That story has not left me for nearly a week. The details…. of seeing a baby draped over a pew. Of my co-worker having to leave, of the smell staying with him. I had a very difficult time not crying in my class.
He said that someone once asked him if one side were better than another- and that in his opinion both were bad. Even the one that was ethically aligned with him. Two sets of people living in the same place, on opposite sides, each trying to grab power from another.
A few days after that I listened to Bishop Rob Wright’s podcast episode “Irrevocable”: “What we’re seeing in Gaza, what we’re seeing in Israel, is an old thing, better covered on a 24 hour news cycle, but it’s an old, old thing. This is a sibling rivalry, this is a family dispute, and it always was so.” (https://forpeople.digital/podcast/irrevocable/)
Remember- we are to love others.
“The factions are so tempting, and I think this is one of the reasons why we’ve got to be really asking ourselves, you know, do I love the religion or do I love the God that the religion seeks to uphold? And so, if we love the God, there’s nothing godly about killing innocent people at a rock concert. Neither is there anything godly about bulldozing children with American-made weaponry right in Gaza. So I think what we’ve got to figure out is is that what is godly? And you know, right now, again, my whole lifetime, you know we’re so deep into this scramble and scratch for land and safety. And both, both citizens of Israel and the citizens of Gaza and of Palestine, they both deserve safety, they both deserve security, they both deserve a good night’s sleep, they both deserve, you know, a high quality healthcare. They both, both, both, both, both, both. And somehow, from the very founding and beyond the founding of the state of Israel, you know, the Palestinian people have been diminished, they have been colonized. You know their living looks like more like an open air prison than anything else. And so, you know, while I am completely and categorically against terrorism and all of its functions, I do know that riot and rage are the expressions of the unheard. And you know, I do know that that’s a very sticky, sticky subject.” (https://forpeople.digital/podcast/irrevocable/)
Did you catch the key there? “[D]o I love the religion or do I love the God that the religion seeks to uphold?”
Father Ben would later preach a sermon that week about power and those who are trying to find more power through theology. I wish I had the emotional energy to go and give it another listen.
Do you know?
Do my words even matter? Does it matter to put my thoughts out there? I often think it doesn’t. One can say it doesn’t match my brand. I mean afterall, I went super viral across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for anecdotes about being a parent. I teach PR and branding so I can see where speaking of this wouldn’t make sense. Why should anyone care?
This blog first started as an extension of my fashion column over a decade ago. It’s evolved so much since then. I’ve been writing about my faith and growth in it for over five years now. Things that weigh on my heart. Or as one former friend texted me not long ago: “I air my dirty laundry.”
Jesus stands up for those whom no one else cares about. Isn’t that what we are all called to do?
I am further reminded that silence often invites malpractice- a phrase Bishop Wright used in another podcast episode and one in which I -poorly- grabbed for a video for a grad school project.
I am reminded of this as I start- or perhaps it’s really continuing?- this work of evangelism. Today I opened up “Interrupting Silence” by Walter Brueggemann. “Those silence breakers, however, were only an echo of the God who broke the silence of chaos with a command to the light” (p.x in Acknowledgements). We are still in the Christmas season- coming out of Advent. That season in which Light was brought to a chaotic world to show God’s love for us.
What I have learned about evangelism of late is that I am not actually new to it- I’ve been doing this for many years and just didn’t quite realize it. At the end of this month I’ll receive my commissioning into officially doing this work that I’ve been doing for some time. My main driver here is for others to know that they are not alone, and for me to become less shy about sharing my love of God and of Christ and that my God Loves All. Even those who are inconvenient to love, especially those.
So perhaps no one here cares. Perhaps I invite Rome and the establishment to come down upon me. Or perhaps even one person reads this and feels that they are not alone. That’s the reason why it matters. To grow one’s heart bigger and inviting more in… even if it pushes others away. Those who really love us will embrace the change. And those who don’t never really loved us at all.
Growing in God and faith often means shedding those who weren’t meant for us. It means realizing that there’s something bigger out there and we are not meant to be comfortable. Comfort means being complacent.
May we continue to grow in the love of Christ.
