Silence

They remained silent (3:3)

In London, a young curate wrote a very ill-considered tweet. It appeared to be an attack on the nation's favourite son, Captain Tom, and drew vicious and malicious criticism. Read with a little more care, it was more an attack on the way such figures as Captain Tom can be used to bolster a very one-sided view of English culture. Indeed it was rather endearing about Captain Tom himself, though, being a tweet, it was distinctly lacking in the necessary nuance such a comment requires. 

It received a stinging and public rebuke from his pastoral overseers, which lacked the nuance essential to bringing calm and left him entirely exposed to the trolls, both public and private. While his friends rallied round, it has left others of us gasping as to what to do. Do we speak or do we remain silent? To speak is to risk exposure to the worst elements of our culture, as well as putting us on the wrong side of our own legitimate authority figures. But to remain silent lists us with Pharisees, who are exposed as hypocrites in their failure to either recognise good or stick to their principles. 

'First they came for the socialists' wrote Niemöller about the Nazi pogroms. As a Lutheran pastor he probably had little sympathy with the views of the socialists, and so naturally did not support them, only later realising his mistake. When the vulnerable and isolated are attacked by the powerful and established, whatever we think of their ideas, it must immediately make us ponder: do I stay silent or do I speak up?