Contradiction

          Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. However, if you have warned the righteous man that the righteous should not sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning; and you have delivered yourself.” (Ezekiel 3:19-21)

           A number of years ago, a Christian coworker told me about a man who had accosted her at her station and tried to browbeat her about accepting Christ as her Savior. When he declined to follow his script, which would have been useless because Jesus was already her savior, he stalked off with dire proclamations that her blood was not on his hands because he had tried to warn her.

          On the other side of the equation, I regularly hear how sick and evil the German Christians were prior to and during World War II because they didn’t stand up sufficiently against Hitler as he marched Jews off to die in concentration camps. Edmund Burke supposedly concurred when he supposedly said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

          As with yesterday’s discussion and truth and love, there is a balance needed here. The man who claimed freedom of my friend's blood was as wrong as the Germans who stood by. The World has always given these contradictory commands to those who follow the principles of the Word of God. “Silence!” it screams if one speaks against it. “Speak up!” it screams if one says nothing against the things of which it disapproves (and sometimes that disapproval is correct!)

          This is the truth v love debate all over again. If I see someone doing something that I know from Scripture to be evil, and I say nothing, isn’t the blood of that person on my hands? If I say nothing, am I not the good man doing nothing? Yet, if I speak, unless I’m agreeing with the World, it will shriek “Silence! That’s not love!” And when Christians acquiesce to this contradiction, is it in obedience to God or to the World?

          We must speak. We must speak with love for the person to whom we’re speaking, but we must speak strongly against evil. To do otherwise leaves our hands bloody.