Last year I wrote about the importance of not being judgmental. Nothing I say here is intended to contradict that.
But as I mentioned in that blog post, there’s a difference between being judgmental and distinguishing between right and wrong. And sometimes, whether our intention is to gently correct someone or to courageously draw attention to injustice, we need to speak up in favor of what’s right and against what’s wrong.
We don’t like hearing that we’re wrong; in fact, we tend to screen out information that contradicts what we believe. But even if we feel convicted, it can be hard for us to admit it. Confessing wrong-doing requires both humility and vulnerability. For that reason, I believe that the most powerful way to speak up is to do so lovingly within a trusting relationship. In healthy families, parents will correct their children without making the children feel that they are in danger of losing their parents’ love.
To my shame, I can show this in action through a personal story. I attended a college that did not have cheerleaders. We did have a student-led pep band, and I was an active member of the band during basketball season. When I was dating my husband, I told him a story about how we once played “The Stripper” when the opposing team’s cheerleaders came out onto the basketball court. When I told him about how the cheerleaders ran off the court once we started playing, he asked me, “Did you look in their eyes?”
I felt horrible. Suddenly an incident that I’d found amusing made me realize that, at my worst, I could be a pretty unfeeling person. But while I would hope I could have heard that message no matter who had delivered it or how they had done so, it helped that it came from someone who loved me and who was not threatening to withdraw his love because of my participation in something so hurtful. When we can gently correct others as my husband corrected me, we probably will find that people are more receptive to our message.
That doesn’t mean we never speak up under other circumstances. It does mean we try to use good judgment about when and how to speak up. There are no hard and fast rules; it comes down to weighing the severity of the offense. If I point out relatively minor offenses to others, I’m probably slipping into judgmentalism rather than standing up for what’s right.
But there are things you don’t let go. Anyone who had been present at that basketball game would have been right to tell us to knock it off. Whether we’re calling someone on the racist joke they just told or speaking out at a town hall meeting about an issue that concerns us, we need to be courageous enough to stand up for what’s right.
In a polarized world, it can be easy either to remain silent, telling ourselves that we won’t convince anyone anyway, or to jump into the fray with gusto, verbally tearing other people down. We’re fallible, and we’re going to mess up as we decide when and how to speak out. But if we are silent, we are giving our implicit approval to wrongdoing, and possibly even collaborating with wrongdoers. If we want to make a difference, we must be people who stand up for what is right and speak out against what is wrong.