Should You Keep Your Mouth Shut?

Should you keep your mouth shut? Or is silence just what other people want from you, so that the ones they like will only ever hear and say what they've already approved of?

Lately I've been doing a lot of spouting off in my sleep. In my dreams I say the things I don't dare say awake. When I watch someone do what I think is wrong, I let them have it. Getting it off my chest that way seems to help. The question that stays with me is why I so rarely do the same thing with my eyes open.

This won't sit well with everyone, especially after women's liberation, but here is what looks true to me: women often let men believe they agree, because arguing isn't worth it. Men frequently behave as though there's one correct opinion and it happens to be theirs, and backing down feels like losing, so they won't give ground to a woman. Women tend to be the family peacemakers, agreeing in order to avoid a fight. So who is more often passive-aggressive, the one who sulks or the one who gets exactly what they want while convincing the other person it was their own idea and good for them all along?

How many wars would there be if women got their way? Most wars trace back to people, usually men, who feel entitled to hurt and even kill because of what they refuse to believe. Controlling others isn't enough for them. They want those others gone.

Fear of death or torture silences opposing views very efficiently. The demand goes further than permission, though. I want to do what I want, and I also want to be certain you aren't just paying me lip service while you let me do it. It has the same logic as a rapist telling a victim, I'm going to hurt you while I do this and you're going to like it, not just pretend to like it, so you don't get killed or worse.

Sexual predators get hooked on the excitement and the release that follows, and like any addict they need bigger and stronger doses to reach the payoff. What I keep hearing now is that blood lust runs worse still. Killing and torture stop being a means and turn into the point, and the thrill has to climb, so the acts grow more savage.

We're afraid of what people will think, and more afraid of what they might do, if we said, or even thought, something they'd reject. Some things do seem morally right or wrong to me; I believe good and evil are real. Maybe the thing that matters most is that people who are in the wrong would love for us to see it their way, stay quiet, and let them get away with murder.

Being nice all the time is not always wise. What example does constant niceness set for our children and for anyone who looks up to us? Do we hand power to evil when we stay pleasant? Maybe we have more power than evil would like us to suspect. Why, in trying to be kind, do we give it more rather than less? Do the oppressed have a voice? And the people who don't know, or would rather not know, should they stay silent and do nothing?

You see this a lot in Christian churches. Ministers and pastors, and the parishioners who follow them, don't want to rock the boat, so they pray that world leaders in business and politics will have good judgment. Stop and think, though. Even if those leaders have good judgment, will they actually use it well? Is it too much to ask that people who have the public's best interests at heart be put into positions of power and backed by the faithful?

Asking others to stand up, work, and pray for world peace rarely gets encouraged out in the open, and sometimes not even inside the church. Often only the pastors and the leading members get to voice that concern from the front. Do they?

In many conventional churches, ordinary members aren't invited to stand before the congregation and raise these things, the same way wives have long been discouraged from contradicting their husbands or stepping into leadership in the pews. Women are welcome to do the work of the church. Leading it is another matter, often quietly unwelcome. Men may not be used to, or comfortable with, the way women prefer to do things, and they discourage it, subtly or not. And yet women might be the strongest voice for peace we've got, at home, in the neighborhood, or in government.

My dreams have made one thing plain to me. Awake or not, I am standing up for what I believe and for my right to say it out loud. What about you? Should the two of us stay quiet?

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