How to Love Your Neighbor AND Speak for Righteousness

Many times we are caught between what is right and keeping peace with those we love. What is the answer? When and where do we draw the line?

Two mass shootings yesterday. Love your neighbor or speak for righteousness? That is my question today.

After posing this question, as well as praying about it, I immediately saw a Facebook post that said, “if you avoid conflict to keep peace, you start a war within yourself.” At first I thought, there’s the answer but for some reason I was inclined to read the comments which I rarely ever do. Many people made good points against it, like turning it over to God and that this quote is not from the Word. After reading many of the comments, I felt they were right and the post was wrong, though it was from a Christian page; I think it is inciting. We are told to seek the path of peace, I just read that after all this last night. Rom 13:19 “Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace.” We are told in the Bible at times to hold our peace, and at others to speak our peace. We must turn it over to be able to discern. The Bible also shows and tells us that God will fight our battles for us if we are believers. If we speak gently from the Word, we will always be able to speak and to be confident in the message conveyed, otherwise, we should hold our peace. 

Personally I think that if we are meant to be in a conflict, we will know because He will put us in it. We won’t be spouting hot air from an arm chair on a cell phone.

So I just need to write these things out as I think them out, help me to process this mess of a world. And in my questioning there was also 1 John 5:19, “And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.” It has been this way for a very long time. 

Though too I did see one that made me want to speak out, against social media, against the media, and that was Psalm 64. “Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer: preserve my life from fear of the enemy. 2 Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity: 3 Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words: 4 That they may shoot in secret at the perfect: suddenly do they shoot at him, and fear not. 5 They encourage themselves in an evil matter: they commune of laying snares privily; they say, Who shall see them? 6 They search out iniquities; they accomplish a diligent search: both the inward thought of every one of them, and the heart, is deep.” I love that in verse 6, that “search out iniquities” translates to “devise injustices” which is so what is going on today with everyone just looking for something over which to be offended which is more fuel to the flame. 

All these people on Facebook sharing hateful, slanderous political posts are simply contributing to the problem. Showing these young people such behavior and setting example for them. The children are our future. Almost every one of these shooters is around twenty. Why are we still allowing the sale of automatic weapons? Why has the government not shut down these web sites where they post their hate-filled agendas? Why do “normal” people not make the connection that in spreading political posts that they are contributing to the problem?

Basically I am trying to write it out here to keep my mouth shut and off of Facebook lest I upset the people with whom I am trying to mend relationships destroyed from former political arguments. It would seem it is more important to keep peace and remain in some kind of a relationship than to further destroy them to speak out on topics for which although I have deep concern, I am neither directly involved nor can likely make any difference by spouting off to my friends and family. But where do we draw the line to stand for injustice? When we are guided, when God says so, if and when we are put in a situation. I don’t know for sure. I am trying to be right, trying to do the right thing. I have already spent decades banging my head against the walls of those who will not or cannot hear. They do not have ears to hear. We are told to walk away from fools but I will speak here on my blog, for those who can hear and may also need support or questions answered today; who are trying to process with heart, as am I, the senseless violence, fear and hatred gripping our nation, as well as our world at large.

The Catholic quote from my last online retreat week with The Daughters of St. Paul, was: “Only when we have accepted god as God, and his immense love for us, only then can our hearts be open to give the goodness we received from him to others.” ~Archbishop Luis Martinez

Let us pray that many hearts will be opened to the acceptance of God.

Also “May the Divine Spirit pour His light into our souls, touch our hearts, reveal to us the world of sanctity and grace. May we not only will to do good to our neighbor, may we actually do it, in every way that we can.” ~ Daughters of St. Paul

And finally in the words of The Rev. Dr. Ellen Clark-King, Executive Pastor and Canon for Social Justice, a prayer in response to gun violence:

"Let us lament with all those who are touched by gun violence

Let us lament the shooter’s choice for violence

Let us lament laws that allow violent men easy access to guns

Let us lament our politicians’ unwillingness to work for change

Let us lament with the hearts broken by loss today

Let us lament all the lives cut short today

Let us lament, O God, and then let us rise from our knees to work for change

In the name of Christ, the prince of peace. Amen."

About Cheryl Yale-Bruedigam

Cheryl Yale-Bruedigam has been writing spiritually for thirty years. With undergraduate studies in English and women's studies, she devoted over a decade of research and writing to women’s studies and spirituality. She is now teaching and sharing A Woman's Path to Wholeness Through Biblical Teachings.