Going along to get along?

I've debated with myself whether or not I should be spending words here crying out against the efforts to kill Terri Schiavo. The case is a divisive issue even among Christians, and I've tried to make this weblog a forum for helping all Christians be transformed into the image of Christ, despite political or doctrinal differences. Already my stance has put me at odds with fellow Christians I otherwise admire and respect deeply. Should I have simply kept quiet on this issue? I found my answer, ironically, in an article on a different subject, in the words of a man with whom I often disagree:

I phoned my life-long colleague and friend, recently. “Why do I do it?” I asked the person on the other end of the telephone line, hundreds of miles away.

“It’s the way it is for some of us. If we are silent, it’s as if the very stones will cry out,” my friend responded.

I don't believe the stones will cry out about all the issues C. Joseph Sprague raises in his article, but he is onto something here:

The problem with the progressive wing of today’s Church is not that the devil makes us do bad things - “smoke, drink, chew or go with boys/girls who do” - but that we are so damnably quiet, so status quo subservient in our niceness, that we ignore the Spirit’s leading and play patsy with the most seductive temptation of all: namely, to go along in order to get along, which is natural for us and all human beings, given the innate hunger for bread, power and entitlement all of us harbor.

I'm reminded of the prophet Isaiah, who called out to God's people in evil times: "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Is. 1:16, 17).

(Thanks to Chin Weng Kit at Invisible Footprints for pointing to this article and for his own comments.)