Article originally published on Doorway Publishing
I am an average American dad. I love my family, I believe in God, and I truly want peace and good relations with my neighbors. That’s it. Let me choose where I want to live, let me decide how to spend my money, let me be responsible for how I raise my kids, let me worship as I please, and let me just be me. That is all I ask, that is the extent of my American dream.
But there is a moral earthquake taking place in our society that won’t seem to leave me alone. An aggressive cultural shift is taking place where traditional values and norms are being attacked on all fronts. Common, regular people are being forced to accept and promote depraved social experimentation as normal, and those who won’t promote it are being threatened by a small, vocal, and violent minority. Not only is the average American told to tolerate this savage takeover, but those who are taking over also want us to join in the celebration of their unwanted overthrow. This small band of moral revolutionaries wants what they want, and they will shout down and run over anyone who gets in their way.
It is as if the prophet Jeremiah’s warning in 6:15 is directly talking about the present-day United States:
“They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct?
No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush.
So they will fall among the fallen;
they will be brought down when I punish them,”
says the Lord.”
Just look at our recent elections: the perverse TikTok fads, porn for profit, public schools playing dangerous games with our naive children, billion-dollar Ponzi schemes gone bankrupt, and a host of other tell-tale signs. Our nation is like a tottering fence ready to collapse. And as I watch all these things promoted and celebrated, I wonder to myself, Why doesn’t God say something? How can he keep quiet as he watches his beautiful world spin out of control and the people he loves be destroyed by the mob’s twisted vanity? His silence is deafening. And what is worse, the world views his silence as acquiescence. I have heard more than once from people who used to believe in Biblical inspiration and inerrancy, “Maybe the Bible doesn’t mean what we once thought it meant. Maybe we can reinvent and reimagine what was once set in stone.”
And some have even gone so far as to say, “Maybe Friedrich Nietzsche was right when it comes to God’s silence. It actually means, ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’”
Dogs and Barking
I have a good friend who used to be a meter reader. He worked for the gas company and went from house to house reading gas meters so the company could send accurate bills to their customers. He said it was a very easy job except for one thing — dogs! You never knew if a dog was dangerous when you entered the yard, so you were not to get near them if you were unsure. Part of meter reading training included a class on dealing with dogs. He learned from this class — and eventually personal experience on the job — that there were three types of dogs and you could tell them apart from their bark. Those three dogs were:
(1) Friendly Dogs
(2) Scared Dogs
(3) Dangerous Dogs
The friendly dogs were obvious, with tails wagging their barks were often loud and melodious. If you had a small dog biscuit and used a high voice in greeting them, they would quickly stop barking and go play leaving you alone to read the meter. The scared dog was a bit trickier to deal with. They were often smaller and meaner than the friendly dogs and would use their bark to try to warn you off. If you ignored them and walked slowly to the meter showing no threat they eventually would stop the barking and back up knowing they were not in danger. But then there were the silent, dangerous dogs. These dogs would not bark when you came near the yard, but they studied you with a firm gaze and watched your every movement — assessing, focusing, tensing up their muscles, and bearing their teeth. The closer you got to them the deeper they would growl. This was the dog you do not test, mess with, give a treat to, or check the meter. You slowly leave the yard and never return.
The silent dog was the dangerous dog.
So you could say, when it comes to dogs, the silence of one speaks louder than the barking of the other two. Silence is not a show of weakness, but it hides enormous strength. This is also true with God: in his brilliance, he uses silence to scream. Like the lyrics to U2’s Running to Stand Still:
God “cries without weeping,
talks without speaking
Screams without raising his voice.”
And those who are spiritually sensitive learn to listen and take heed. There are three distinct places that explain the use of silence in the Bible. And my hope is that you will not give up hope when his silence is suffocating.
The Sound of Silence
“Fools” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence”—Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
Silence as Judgment:
(Psalm 50 and the Throne of Fire)
Psalm 50 is meant to be terrifying. The atmosphere is one of dread and despair, “Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before him, and around him a tempest rages. He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that he may judge his people.” If you notice, at the throne of God, he will no longer be silent. This indicates that before we come to this throne room scene, God’s natural tendency has been to be silent. He just sits and assesses. Even Psalm 11 says, “The Lord is in his holy temple…He observes the sons of men; his eyes examine them.” In other words, he is watching, always watching! And what he is watching for is how people behave, how they are choosing to live on the earth he created. So in Psalm 50, he gives a brief warning concerning the specific areas he is assessing, first to his people, believers (v7), and then he gives a report concerning the wicked, non-believers (v16).
When it comes to the non-believers he keeps a record concerning 3 vital categories:
a. The Law of God and how the wicked treat it (16-17). He is especially troubled by those who identify as religious — they could be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Neo-evangelical, and so on and so forth — and then they actively ignore the laws that they say they verbally acknowledge. Often the word that is used for this type of behavior is “hypocrisy”, or a mask wearer. These are people who profess belief but they practically live in disbelief. God sees this and he will use hypocrisy as a reason to render a guilty verdict on the last day.
b. The Sanctity of Private Property and Marriage (18). God has given human beings agency and they are to steward what he has given them with respect toward others in a pure and noble way. Humans are to “learn to control their own bodies in a way that is holy and honorable.” (1 These. 4:4). Self-control respects and enjoys the limits and boundaries that God has set up, knowing they are for our good and protection. Private property is given by God to people to personally care for, invest in, and bless others with. Violence is done when people violate those limits because they are greedy and selfish. The same is true when it comes to sexual relations. God says the limits that make sex holy and honorable are to be respected in the context of the “marriage bed” alone. (Hebrews 13:4). Marriage, as designed by Jesus himself, is between a man and a woman, it is there where the two will become one flesh. Any other arrangement outside of this design is active, willful violence to the limits of sexual purity. Those who violate them will be held accountable on the day of judgment.
c. The Importance of Truth as it relates to Lying, Cheating, and Slandaring (19-20). God wants people to be honest about everything. Honesty is when a person reflects in word and action the truth of reality as it really is, not as you hope it to be, or changes reality to fit into his selfish desires or some ideological experiment. It is joining in with life as God intends it to be. A reimagined theology and spirituality is nothing more than a fancy way of lying. Gender and queer theory is a philosophy built on deceit. Trans-mutilation is forcing a false reality on someone that needs proper time to learn to live in the beauty that God has created them to originally exist in.
Living outside of God’s design disrupts Shalom, the harmony God first intended for his original creation. As one writer has said, “The purpose of norms is to bring us to life in its fullness by pointing us to paths which safely lead us there. Norms are not straitjackets which squeeze the life out of us…the created world is attuned to these norms.” So truth corresponds to the norms that set people free to live as designed. When people ignore the truth and lie to one another to satisfy their own selfish wants, not only do they suffer the natural consequences of doing so, God takes note.
So as he assesses and watches these wrongful actions, he remains silent. But this is where people need to be very careful. The natural tendency we all have toward silence is we view it as either weakness or compliance on the silent person’s part. Look at verse 21, “These things (violations) you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you. But I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face.” The phrase, “altogether like you” means that when God is silent we assume he is behaving as a normal human being behaves. If a normal person does not like a certain bad behavior they will either immediately condemn it or do everything in their power to stop it. But if someone remains silent it usually means they are okay with the behavior or are too weak to stop it.
God is saying that if this is how a person is assessing his silence, they are categorically wrong and will eventually land themselves in a heap of hot trouble — tempest fire trouble. He has a day when all his books, the recorded actions of every person, will be opened and every person’s deeds will come to light. So God’s silence is not compliance, it is a warning of coming judgment.
Silence as Kindness:
(Romans 2: and Lake Mead)
Romans 2:4-5 is a beautiful passage on the heart of God as he stays silent. His goal is not to punish but to forgive. If God would respond quickly and decisively in kind to the wickedness of people’s actions they would be hopeless, lost, and condemned. So his waiting is a sign of his kindness and desire for restoration. Silence is like Lake Mead, a reservoir that was formed from the Hoover Damn which stores up the water that flows from the Colorado River. Those underneath the damn are safe for a little while. In the exact same way, God is storing up his wrath for the day of God’s wrath – it is not being poured out immediately. But in the meantime, we should look out upon this vast expanse of stored wrath as a kindness, a relenting, and a desire for people to come to him while they have a chance in repentance. Silence is the holding back of wrath, and the holding back of wrath is a very kind thing because deserved justice would just immediately flow and destroy. But as 2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Silence as a Trap:
(Colossians 2:13-15 and Playing Poker with God)
The third use of silence is as a way for God to get his enemy to overplay his hand. Silence is God’s using his poker face, bluffing that his cards are weak which causes Satan to always up the ante. As his silence grows, so do the wages and fruits of sin. Satan’s followers (those he has deceived) believe they are getting away with their juicy rebellion as God bluffs in silence. They are laughing in the face of God thinking they have beaten The Almighty. They bark like scared dogs, they shout and scream and accuse, while God shuts his mouth.
But what is really happening is that they are overplaying their hands and soon God is going to call their bluff right at the point when the exposure of their folly will be complete. As the well-known Biblical axiom goes, “Pride goes before the fall.” And that is the point of silence — to lure the proud into a comfortable lie of safety. This quiet gives their deeds time to fester and when they are ready to be exposed, they will be seen as the horror and monstrosity that they have always been.
If exposure is done too early people won’t be as shocked. So he waits quietly in the dark. And as he waits, he also knows this will rouse the righteous anger of the godly. God wants his people to participate in the reformation of the world, not to sit by expecting him to do all the work. God wants true believers to eventually get fed up in the face of unrelenting evil. Don’t worry, God always comes to rescue at the right time, but he wants to use his people to be the agents of that rescue.
God knows that people are lazy and won’t be moved to action until they are fed up. His silence lets the evil grow and mature while forcing those he loves to finally become uncomfortable. Are you uncomfortable yet? Or are you stuck on your iPhone, watching your shows on tv, playing your silly games? Uncomfortable people are the ones who pray. Silence leads to discomfort, discomfort leads to irritation, and irritation leads to prayer and action. There is a method to God’s seemingly silent madness.
Scripture teaches that God allowed his Son to be sent to earth to become a sacrifice for sin. But the only way to do that is that he had to stay silent. Even Jesus wondered where the Father was as he stretched upon the cross in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God knew Satan would overplay his hand, he thought the cross was the moment that he won it all, and finally, the Son of God lost. But Colossians 2:13-15 says, “Not so fast Devil, you are the one who really lost.” God lured him into his trap, by using silence, weakness, and compliance, Jesus beat Satan at his own game.
Conclusion
Christians so easily give up hope when God stays silent. I know I do when it seems like the world is winning. I hate how politicians lie and will do anything to gain an advantage. It breaks my heart to see young boys and girls seduced into believing they can change their bodies as easily as they change their hair color. It drives me crazy knowing Satan thinks he is winning when he convinces people to kill the image of God within the womb. But underneath all the silence God is screaming.
Just remember who the dangerous dog really is — the one who watches.
