The Price of Silence

Everything in life costs something. Although it may not be monetary, although the cost may not be something as palpable as legal tender, everything has a cost attached to it. Call it the consequence of choice, call it chain reaction, life has proven that there is a corollary to everything.

If you want to draw closer to God, it will cost you time, and the other things you would have been doing during that time. If you want to drop a few pounds, it will cost you the deserts, cupcakes, and evening snacks. If you want to spend more time with your kids, it will cost you the overtime pay at work. You get the picture.

Some things are worth the cost. Getting closer to God is worth the price of time and other useless endeavors. Spending more time with your kids is worth the extra few bucks in your bank account. 

Empirical though it might be, the evidence we can observe shows clearly that no one on their deathbed bemoaned the fact that they didn’t reach the tenth level of candy crush, or that they didn’t work more hours.

Many, however, regretted not drawing closer to God while they were able-bodied and full of vigor, as well as not spending more time with their kid as they grew, and eventually moved out of the house.

If you do not know the names Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Niemoller perhaps it’s time you did. 

During a time of compliance, during a time of lemming-like adherence to the utopian future a murderous despot was painting for his people, these two men saw the dangers of it, they saw the inhumanity of it and attempted to speak out.

One of them spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps for his attempt at warning his countrymen. The other was not so lucky. He was executed by hanging for his attempted overthrow of Hitler.

Perhaps during that time, the church was slow to react because they had never heard of anything as what had been taking place. They could not process and see the course their nation was headed down. We have no such excuses. With the benefit of hindsight and the lessons history ought to have taught us, we should clearly understand that the road we are headed down leads to the persecution, incarceration, and extermination of Christians.

There are dozens of new laws being debated currently within these United States that will criminalize calling sin what it is, that would criminalize preaching the Bible, and that would criminalize calling men to repentance. And what of the church? The church is silent as always, not understanding that it’s far more difficult stopping a ball once it’s started rolling down the hill than it is to keep it static atop the hill.

For Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller, it was already too late because the disease had already taken root. The cancer had spread, it had eaten away at the morality of the nation, and enough were blinded, enough were bled dry of their humanity as to watch fellow human beings starve to death or be led into gas chambers.

If only the church would stand if only the church would rise, if only the church would make its voice heard, it may not be too late for us. If we do not, then the price of our silence may just be too much to bear.

 “First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.” - Martin Niemoller

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.