When Playing It Safe Becomes Dangerous: The Call to Courageous Faith
There is a quiet kind of danger that rarely gets talked about in conversations about good and evil. It does not wear a villain's face. It does not announce itself with loud proclamation. It simply sits still, says nothing, and lets the world burn while telling itself it is being kind. It is the danger of passive faith — of knowing the truth and choosing comfort over conviction.
The ancient story of a priest named Jehoiada, recorded in 2 Chronicles 23, cuts to the heart of this issue with remarkable force. But to understand why his courage matters, you have to understand the darkness that surrounded him.
A Legacy of Ruin
The kingdom of Judah had been sliding in a troubling direction for some time. Despite the faithfulness of kings like Asa and Jehoshaphat — men who sought God with genuine hearts — the generations that followed made catastrophic choices. Jehoram, Jehoshaphat's son, walked in wickedness and died a gruesome death as a direct consequence. His son Ahaziah reigned for a single year before meeting his own end at the hands of Jehu, a man appointed by God to execute judgment on a corrupt royal house.
What stands out in the account of Ahaziah is not merely that he did evil. It is the reason given for why he did evil. The text is blunt: his mother encouraged him in doing wrong. Her name was Athaliah, and she was the kind of influence that quietly poisons everything it touches. She did not just model wickedness — she actively cultivated it in her son.
This raises an uncomfortable question for all of us. What kind of influence are we? Are we the kind of people who, when others look at the record of our lives, see someone who pointed others toward God — or someone who, whether through active encouragement or silent indifference, nudged the people around us further from him?
The Poison of Toxic Empathy
There is a concept worth sitting with here. In our cultural moment, empathy has been elevated to the highest of virtues — and genuine empathy is, in fact, a beautiful thing. But there is a corrupted version of it that has crept into homes, communities, and even churches. It is the kind of empathy that loves people so desperately in the short term that it refuses to tell them the truth that could save them in the long term.
When we celebrate what God calls harmful, when we stay silent about sin because we do not want to make anyone uncomfortable, when we call evil good because the alternative feels unkind — that is not love. That is what might be called toxic empathy. And it does real damage.
Jesus, the one who was described in John 1:14 as being full of both grace and truth — not one or the other, but both simultaneously — demonstrated what genuine love actually looks like. When he encountered the woman at the well, as described in John 4, he did not offer her vague encouragement or polite small talk. He named her reality with precision and without cruelty. He told her the truth about her life. And rather than driving her away, that truth, delivered in love, set her free. She ran to tell everyone she knew.
That is the model. Grace and truth. Not grace without truth, which becomes permissiveness. Not truth without grace, which becomes cruelty. But both, held together, offered with tears and with strength.
The Courage to Act
When Athaliah discovered that her son was dead, she moved swiftly and ruthlessly to consolidate power, ordering the destruction of the entire royal family. It appeared, for a moment, that the line of David might be extinguished entirely. But a woman named Jehoshibah had hidden a young boy named Joash, and for six years, this child remained concealed in the temple of God.
Then came Jehoiada.
The text says that in the seventh year, Jehoiada "showed his strength." That phrase deserves attention. His strength was not physical. It was the strength of conviction meeting consistency. He had held a secret for six years. He had protected a child who represented the rightful continuation of God's covenant with the house of David. And when the moment came, he did not wait for someone else to act. He organized. He made a covenant. He stationed men at the doors. He put the right king in the right place.
He was a priest who became a warrior — not with bloodlust, but with the settled, serious understanding that there are moments when doing nothing is itself a choice, and not a neutral one.
The apostle Peter describes believers in 1 Peter 2:9 as a royal priesthood. If that is true, then the call of Jehoiada is, in some sense, a call to all of us. We are not meant to be passive observers of the world around us. We are meant to be people of conviction who act on what we believe, who use whatever sphere of influence we have been given, and who refuse to let comfort become a reason for silence.
The Question That Remains
There is a sobering thread running through the stories of Ahaziah and Athaliah and Jehoiada. God is keeping a record. Not in a cold, bureaucratic sense, but in the way that a story is written — with every choice, every moment of courage or cowardice, every word of truth spoken or swallowed, contributing to the overall arc of a life.
What is being written about yours?
The invitation is not to become harsh or combative. It is not to pick up a sword in the literal sense and go looking for a fight. It is something quieter and more demanding than that. It is to stop playing it safe. To love people enough to tell them the truth. To pray with the urgency of someone who believes prayer actually changes things. To vote, to speak, to act, to engage — not out of anger, but out of the settled conviction that God is still working, still moving, and still looking for people courageous enough to be part of what he is doing.
Playing it safe is not the same as being at peace. Sometimes it is simply another name for letting evil go unchallenged. And that, in the end, is no kind of kindness at all.
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