When Silence Becomes Sin

The life of a little light-skinned, mixed-race girl in a world split between Black and white developed in me an oppressive habit: silencing myself. Feeling different in every setting left me terrified of being spotlighted, bullied, othered, or exposed as not enough. I learned early that if I just stayed quiet, maybe I could stay safe.

That desire to remain invisible became a survival mechanism. It was fear, wrapped in silence, wrapped in the lie that my voice didn’t matter.

I can count on both hands, and maybe all of my toes, how many times I’ve held my opinion, stifled my truth, and cowered in a corner to avoid confrontation, discomfort, or just the vulnerability of being heard. I was so afraid of standing out that I hid in the shadows of marginalization. I told myself: Never good enough. Never important enough. Never worthy. Never necessary. Never a voice for my own liberation, let alone anyone else’s.

But God...

Never is not never to Him. With Him, all things are possible. He takes the most unlikely among us and aligns us with His will. He makes us a light on a hill, a voice in the wilderness, a guide in the midst of fog.

So here I sit. Using my voice not just to empower myself, but to pour into others. To encourage, to teach, to be a voice for the voiceless.

Not on a national or international stage…yet. But online, where millions might scroll by. From my family. In my community. In the everyday spaces where truth is needed most.

I've come to accept: someone is always watching, even when they don’t announce themselves. And when they are watching, I want to be found faithful to my voice—the one God gave me.

Through the school of hard knocks and the study of God’s Word, I’ve learned something profound:

When we silence ourselves, someone always benefits. It’s rarely those we’ve been called to love, serve, or liberate.

But when we speak, truth, encouragement, edification, prophetic witness, we almost always reach someone. And not just on the surface. We speak from healed places. From holy places. From Spirit-filled places. And when we speak from there, the Holy Spirit shows up every time.

But if we’re honest? Human nature, and society, teaches us to default to silence when our voices are most needed. And to shout when silence might serve us better.

So let’s talk about it.

Let’s unwrap this together by going to the Word of God, naming cultural truths, and applying these lessons in real time. Because when we choose silence in the face of injustice, someone is always benefiting. And too often, it’s not us.

Growing up in Pentecostal churches like Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and various apostolic-charismatic spaces, prophecy wasn’t optional. It was expected. It was in the air, in the sermons, in the prayer lines, and in the testimonies. We believed the prophets weren’t just the ones in the 66 books of the Bible but also we knew modern-day Christians were still being called to speak on behalf of God.

I’ve had prophetic words spoken over my life and calling more times than I can count. Words that stirred my spirit. Words that made me nervous. Words that required discernment. I was taught to always test a word before the Lord and weigh it against His Word before receiving it as truth.

But let me be real: as a child and even as a young woman, prophecy sometimes felt more like fortune-telling than the bold truth-telling I later recognized in the prophets of old. The way it was practiced around me didn’t always carry the sobriety I now know prophecy requires.

As I’ve matured in my faith, my womanhood, and my Kingdom citizenship. I’ve come to see prophecy in a new way. It’s not about performance. It’s about purpose.

Prophecy is not a spiritual parlor trick. It is a holy call to disrupt injustice and restore truth.

I’ve come to embrace that those who speak prophetically aren’t always forecasting the future. They’re often articulating God’s heart for the present. They are vessels. Voices. Sacred disruptors.

And I’ve also noticed: God doesn’t speak on demand. He doesn’t move on our timeline. He speaks when it matters. When something must be revealed, corrected, or released.

As the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann put it:

In Exodus 4–5, we see Moses’ call unfold. God didn’t choose him because he was articulate or popular. In fact, Moses protested his own calling. But God made it clear: “I will put My words in your mouth.” And through Moses, God disrupted the empire, confronted Pharaoh, and liberated an entire people.

Once the people were free, Moses didn’t stop speaking. He continued as God’s voice, guiding them, correcting them, and reminding them of the covenant.

Then there’s Amos. A prophet called from the fields to rebuke the elite of Israel. He spoke boldly against religious hypocrisy and the exploitation of the poor. His words were sharp, uncomfortable, and righteous.

Sound familiar? That same Spirit echoed in Jesus Christ, who walked as Prophet, Priest, King, and Liberator. He flipped tables. He challenged the Pharisees. He declared, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” (Luke 4:18)

The Bible is clear: when God speaks, it’s intentional. When He is silent, that too is intentional. And when He raises up a prophet, ancient or modern, it is never for spectacle. It’s for reformation.

So before we ever ask who benefits from your silence, let’s first ask: Who gets free when you speak?

Silence is often interpreted as consent.

There’s even a Latin phrase for it: “Qui tacet consentire videtur”—he who is silent is seen to consent. I’ve heard it used in legal and social spaces, maybe you have too. The meaning is simple: when you don’t speak up, people assume you’re in agreement. That you’re okay with what’s happening. That you approve, even when deep down, you don’t.

And let’s be honest: in many situations, that assumption holds weight. Silence becomes a stamp of approval, even when it was never meant to be.

But then there’s that other phrase I grew up hearing: “No news is good news.”

In my family, we used this to explain away the quiet, especially when we hadn’t heard from one another in a while. It was a way to protect peace, avoid confrontation, and assume that if nobody was saying anything, things must be fine.

But the older I get, and the more I reflect on the world we live in, I realize that silence isn’t always peace. Sometimes it’s pain. Sometimes it’s distance. Sometimes it’s survival. And sometimes, it’s complicity.

So what do we do with that tension?

How do we make peace with the fact that silence can both protect and betray? That it can both heal and harm?

Let’s start with the Word of God:

I was reminded of this deeply while watching a documentary on the Freedom Riders of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Every time they were attacked, on buses, in stations, in the streets, I felt this rising fury inside me. Not just at the white men who beat them, but at the crowds of people who stood there and said nothing. Who watched. Who smirked. Who let it happen.

White women. Children. Bystanders. Silent. And yet, they filled pews on Sunday morning, claiming to be “God-fearing Christians.”

I found myself wondering: How did they read Proverbs 31? Did they ever preach it? Did they ever hear it preached to them?

Because not speaking up when injustice is in your face, when someone is being crushed and you could say something, do something, be something isn’t passive. It’s protective. It’s complicit.

Even now, the silence of many of our government officials in the face of rising fascism, voter suppression, book bans, and anti-Black and anti-immigrant policies feels eerily familiar. It’s giving Jim Crow 2.0. And whether their silence comes from fear of political backlash or quiet alignment with these dangerous ideologies, the message to the public is the same:

Your silence is your signature on injustice.

That line has been echoing in my spirit.

Because on an everyday level, we all have moments where we choose, whether consciously or not, to appear complicit or to become a witness. We may not all receive a prophetic word from God’s lips, but we have His written Word that calls us to act:

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

Whether we are afraid, oppressed, exhausted, or conditioned into silence, we still have a choice:

How will we show up? What will we allow our silence to say? Who will our silence protect and who will it leave unprotected?

Speaking doesn’t always require a mic, a stage, or a hashtag. Sometimes it looks like naming injustice in a meeting. Sometimes it looks like correcting a family member. Sometimes it looks like simply saying, “This isn’t okay, and I won’t be quiet about it.”

Because silence has a cost. And that cost is too high to pay with your soul.

In the Black community’s long, bruised history with survival, a tool was created to help us endure the gaze and judgment of white supremacy: respectability.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham gave language to this in the early 1990s, calling it the “politics of respectability.” She traced it back to the early 20th century, particularly within the Women’s Convention of the Black Baptist Church during the Progressive Era. (Harris, 2003)

The thinking went like this: If Black folks—especially Black women—could embody temperance, cleanliness, thrift, sexual purity, and politeness, then white America might grant us respect. Might treat us as fully human. Might stop killing us in the streets and demonizing us in their laws.

Imagine that. The burden of transformation placed squarely on the backs of the oppressed, not the oppressors.

Fast forward to today. It’s 2025. We’ve had an African American president. A Black woman vice president. We’ve seen Black excellence in the halls of Congress and the bench of the Supreme Court (even if one of those seats makes us sigh heavily every time his name comes up).

Yes, there have been historic “firsts.” Yes, we’ve had symbolic wins.

But let’s be honest: respectability hasn’t brought us collective liberation. It may have opened doors, but it did not dismantle the systems on the other side of them.

We still watched voting rights erode. We still saw anti-Black, anti-woman, and anti-queer legislation rise like floodwaters. We still watched Black bodies policed, silenced, surveilled, and suffocated. We still watched books about our own existence banned. We still watched our voices, your voice, called “divisive” just for telling the truth.

So if respectability hasn't saved us, what is our silence really protecting?

What is our alignment with the status quo accomplishing for us now?

Because righteousness is not about blending in to survive. It’s about standing up to testify.

Righteousness is what aligns us with God, not with comfort. It comes from His Word and His voice, not from political party lines or institutional approval.

And if we study scripture honestly, we see it again and again: God’s will rarely aligns with what appeases the powers that be.

Jesus didn’t die to make us respectable.

He rose to make us righteous.

And let’s be clear: Jesus rocked the boat. He flipped tables. He called out hypocrites. He walked into the center of the empire and proclaimed a different kind of Kingdom; one where the last shall be first, where the oppressed are seen, where truth overturns tradition.

He disrupted power so we could be made right with God, not so we could be quiet and liked by men.

So let me ask you plainly:

Are you staying silent because you're afraid of rocking the boat? Are you holding back your truth to protect your reputation? Is that fear, righteousness, or is it respectability in disguise?

If Jesus risked everything to confront injustice and make a way for our righteousness, how much more is expected of us now?

I can hear you, “Okay, Nikki, I hear you. But I’m not called to be a prophet.”

Let me stop you right there.

You don’t have to wear the mantle of prophetic gifting or be called to the role of prophet to walk in truth, to speak with power, or to stand on righteousness.

You may not be called to the pulpit, the mic, or the streets. But you are called to someone somewhere somehow. Even if that’s in the walls of your home.

The Lord God used everyday women to speak truth to power.

Esther used her position and her voice to save her people.

The Hebrew midwives who defied Pharaoh’s orders to kill all Hebrew sons were spared and blessed by God with their own.

Lydia, a businesswoman who opened her home to Christian believers, helped build the early church.

The Samaritan woman at the well who met Jesus was not ordained to evangelize His presence in her town. But she did.

These women didn’t wait for a pulpit.

They didn’t need a license or a hashtag.

They just spoke up - and the world changed around them.

You may not be Esther or Deborah —but you are a mama, an organizer, a teacher, a neighbor… and that matters.

It is accepting that being a voice of reason and righteousness does not require a platform. It requires a heart posture that desires God’s will and best for self and others.

You most likely already flow from this posture.

We’re talking about those who refuse to be complicit and silenced. The ones saying “no” when the world expects them to say “yes.”

Calling out injustice in public spaces.

Teaching your children the truth, the whole truth, about who you are, they are, God is, and the surrounding society is.

It is we who choose to live with integrity in a crooked system. Choosing to stand up straight in a crooked space.

You’re probably already using your voice and doing prophetic work, and didn’t even realize it.

Some practical ways everyday people speak up:

We may be quiet by nature. We may be grieving. We may be healing. We may be unsure.

But you are still responsible for what you know to be true.

Silence might feel like safety, but in this season, neutrality is not an option.

Whether you're speaking on a stage or at the dinner table, your voice matters. Whether you're raising a child or raising awareness, your voice matters. Whether you're marching or mentoring or simply refusing to lie about what you see, you are already in the fight.

You are not too small. You are not too late. You are not disqualified by your past or your doubts.

You are equipped by your God.

We are in the midst of a new civil rights movement—whether people want to name it or not.

The attacks are coming from every direction:

Elders who lived through the fights of the 1950s and '60s are sounding the alarm. Those of us who are historically literate see the patterns: the normalization of oppression, the silencing of resistance, the bending of truth for political convenience.

This isn’t a drill.

And yet, we’re being told to hush. To pray quietly. To be nice. To stop “making everything about race,” or gender, or power. To be more palatable.

But how can we be silent when:

This moment is not asking for performative activism.

This moment is demanding prophetic courage. We need divine help and guidance. We need Spirit-filled action. We need a fresh wind of prophetic speech that speaks truth to power until it shakes the silence out of those still sitting in their comfort.

We need voices like yours.

Voices that don’t just go viral - but go vertical, aligning with God’s justice and not just man’s approval. Voices that aren’t afraid to speak again and again—even when it’s inconvenient, even when it’s costly.

Because in this season, sacred speech isn’t optional—it’s essential.

It’s what pulls people out of neutrality and into clarity. It’s what calls the complicit out of silence and into responsibility. It’s what turns the hearts of the fearful into fire-starters for justice.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for But God is the one who has been waiting on us.

So speak. Write. March. Vote. Teach. Correct. Preach. Resist.

Use your voice like your liberation depends on it—because it does.

Reflect: Where have I been silent when God was calling me to speak and/or act?

Share this article or teaching with one person who needs encouragement to use their voice.