Nikita Khrushchev often denounced the atrocities of his predecessor, Josef Stalin, and on one occasion, when doing so, he was interrupted by a heckler who called out; “You were there. Why didn’t you stop him?” Khrushchev stopped speaking, then roared out, “Who said that?” Not a soul answered. An agonizing silence followed as nobody dared move a muscle. Then Khrushchev replied quietly, “Now you know why.”
Fear has a way of paralyzing us. However, the Bible says we should be prepared to confront evil openly. It calls us to “speak the truth in love.” The key elements in this are truth and love. We shouldn’t back off from confronting things that are wrong, but we should always do so without malice – truth motivated by love.“There is no fear in love,” says the Bible. “For perfect love casts out fear.”