Speaking Truth to Power, With Love

In this day of unconscionable but widespread social-media bashing of anyone who holds a different position on anything, Christ followers face a clear calling. As truth seekers, we must position ourselves to speak into tense or even drastically unrighteous, unjust, and dangerous situations. Such an enterprise may seem uninviting or perilous, but our status as children of God with divine resources as our birthright in Christ demands that we not shrink from this responsibility. And, yes, this responsibility is a privilege. Consider the words of 1 Peter 2:21-23:

For you have been called for this purpose, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you would follow in His steps, He who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being abusively insulted, He did not insult in return; while suffering, He did not threaten, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.

These verses explain not only a definite calling for Christians, but also a clear model and crisp focus on the “how.” How is such a calling to be lived out? Look at Jesus’ example: He “kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.”

In these days, the adage “speaking truth to power” seems eminently worthy of our attention. But note that my title adds the words “with love.” It has become commonplace to oppose tyranny and falsehood, but is that opposition always driven by love for the hearers, readers, or witnesses? We are called to follow an example of suffering that trusts Him who judges rightly—suffering without regard for self-protection, but with great regard for the eternal well-being of others.

It has become commonplace to oppose tyranny and falsehood, but is that opposition always driven by love for the hearers, readers, or witnesses? Share on X

An obvious but general Old Testament example would be the prophets. They communicated truth to people who didn’t want to hear it, and many paid the price through mocking, scorn, mistreatment, and even death (for example, see Jesus’ words directed to Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37 as a summary). Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada (2 Chronicles 24:20-22), and Uriah, the son of Shemaiah (Jeremiah 26:20-23), are examples of prophets who died because of their faithful work.

In the New Testament, Stephen’s example in Acts 7 is poignant. According to the preceding chapter, he was “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5) and is described as “full of grace and power” (Acts 6:8). Moreover, the people “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking” (Acts 6:10). His bold ministry resulted in opposition, and he was brought before the high priest and asked to give an account. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 was essentially a recital of Israel’s circuitous salvation history, until his epilogue:

You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it. (verses 51-53)

Yes, this was a strong warning, but it was loving “straight shooting”—fuel to be ignited by the Spirit’s fire with a heart inclined toward hopefulness for these aggressors’ rescue from perdition. He could have cowered apologetically or deferentially, but he spoke truth to power, with love. It cost him his life (Acts 7:54-60).

From the second century AD comes another powerful example, A Plea for the Christians (also known as The Embassy for the Christians), written by an early Christian apologist, Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133-c. 190 AD). One remarkable thing about this carefully written defense of the faith was its recipients. This wasn’t a missive sent to a friend, neighbor, or colleague; Athenagoras wrote his letter in AD 176 or 177 to the co-emperors of the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius and his son, Commodus.

One of Athenagoras’ chief goals was to respectfully disabuse the co-emperors of widely circulated but totally incorrect understandings of certain doctrines and practices of Christians: namely, that Christ followers were atheistic (after all, they didn’t worship or sacrifice to the Roman gods, or emperors); incestuous (after all, they married people they referred to as brothers and sisters); and cannibalistic (after all, they ate the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist). But his initial parry in Chapter 1 was to address the wholesale bias against the name “Christian,” calling out the emperors themselves:

But why–for do not, like the multitude, be led astray by hearsay–why is a mere name odious to you? Names are not deserving of hatred; it is the unjust act that calls for penalty and punishment. And accordingly, with admiration of your mildness and gentleness, and your peaceful and benevolent disposition towards every man, individuals live in the possession of equal rights; and the cities, according to their rank, share in equal honour; and the whole empire, under your intelligent sway, enjoys profound peace. But for us who are called Christians you have not in like manner cared; but although we commit no wrong…you allow us to be harassed, plundered, and persecuted, the multitude making war upon us for our name alone.

Thankfully, for our sakes, Athenagoras went further, graciously explaining the Christians’ collective rejection of polytheism, materialism, and pantheism, and their unapologetic worship of the triune God. Note well his reasoning and his tone in the face of injustice—to the emperors, no less. He spoke truth to power, with love.

My final example is a man who, regrettably, is little known; happily, his written works survive. That man is James W.C. Pennington, the first known Black man to attend Yale University. In perhaps his best-known work, The Fugitive Blacksmith, he recounts his childhood and young adulthood as a man born into slavery in Maryland in 1807.

Before launching into his biographic sketch, in his preface, he roundly repudiates the chattel principle, writing, “THE SIN of slavery lies in the chattel principle, or relation. Especially have I felt anxious to save professing Christians, and my brethren in the ministry, from falling into this great mistake. My feelings are always outraged when I hear them speak of ‘kind masters,’—’Christian masters’—’the mildest form of slavery,’—’well fed and clothed slave,’ as extenuations of slavery.” In spite of the raging actuality of chattel slavery, Pennington, as a former slave, exposed tragic instances of euphemism widely used to justify iniquity.

At the time he wrote this memoir, published in London in 1849, he had for two decades resided in the northern United States, having escaped from his captors on a western Maryland plantation in late 1827. Although his escape and travel were perilous, he made it to Adams County, Pennsylvania, where he was taken in, employed, and educated by a Quaker couple. He later moved to New York, where he continued his education and worked as one of the first Black-American abolitionists.

After becoming a Christian, he trained for ministry at Yale Divinity School, served congregations in Connecticut and New York, and organized the first Black missionary society. In fact, he was the minister who officiated in the wedding of Frederick Douglass and his fiancée, and who also assisted the Amistad captives (Mende tribesmen) in their return to Africa. After the War Between the States, he ministered to congregations in Natchez, Mississippi; Portland, Maine; and, finally, in Jacksonville, Florida. He died there in 1870.

In spite of a life full of challenges, albeit with regular glimpses of God’s providential care, Pennington was a man whose life counted for eternity. His words still speak to hearts willing to hear—of man’s inhumanity to man, of a renovated life, and of concern for the good of his former captor, Colonel Frisby Tilghman. One of the most beautiful parts of The Fugitive Blacksmith is in its appendix, a letter to the man who enslaved, deprived, and punished him, his parents, and his siblings. The following quotations come from that letter, written when Pennington might have preferred anonymity insofar as he was still a fugitive from the South and subject to recapture, a condition that was only worsened later by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Nevertheless, he wrote this, and much more, to the aged Tilghman:

…I never regarded you as my master. The nature which God gave me did not allow me to believe that you had any more right to me than I had to you… I have a conscience devoid of offence towards God and towards all men, yourself not excepted. And I verily believe that I have performed a sacred duty to God and myself, and a kindness to you, in taking the blood of my soul peaceably off your soul… You are now…pressing on to eternity with the weight of these seventy years upon you. 

I beseech you, dear sir, to look well and consider this matter soundly. In yonder world you can have no slaves–you can be no man’s master… Are you then, by sustaining the relation of a slaveholder, forming a character to dwell with God in peace?

Pennington closed his letter respectfully, with kind regards. His was not an appeal for their excoriation but, instead, for their self-examination. This gracious and clarion call to repentance was not only elegantly expressed as well-reasoned rhetoric, but more importantly, an utterly uncoerced communication driven by sincere concern for the soul of a former persecutor.  (Can you imagine the letter he could have written?) Understanding the eternal peril Tilghman faced, he spoke truth to power with love.

The words of Stephen, Athenagoras, and Pennington were profoundly countercultural, and they knowingly and willingly risked themselves in the face of clear danger. Their lives resonate with the timbre of Paul’s counsel to his spiritual son in 2 Timothy 3:12: “Indeed, all who want to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” May we likewise pursue and understand biblical truth, recognize injustice and unrighteousness as expressed in the words and deeds of those in authority, and speak into such situations with our whole lives, to the glory of God and for the ultimate good of the wayward and unlovely.

“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).