One group screams out, “We’re being oppressed!” The other group yells back in defense, “No you’re not!” And then a third group sometimes enters the conversation saying, “Can’t we all just get along?”
While the sentiment of this third group is good, their words are more insulting than they might think. What the oppressed hear is, “Just calm down about your pain. It’s not a big deal. If you stop talking and caring so much, we can all be at ease.”
As though this isn’t insulting enough, proposals are then given as to how to move forward without the ruckus. Many think that true justice is created by your average citizen calling their state representatives, filing the correct paperwork, and magically changing city, state, and federal laws with their average lawmaking genius.
While lawmaking is appropriate when addressing issues of oppression, it walks hand in hand with activism. When your house is on fire, you don’t have a few decades to put it out. You address the problem as loudly and as quickly as you can without becoming an oppressor yourself. You scream. You shout. You march down the street. You make a maladjusted holy ruckus like Jesus when he flipped the courtyard tables.
When Jesus blessed the peacemakers, he was not endorsing the silence of the oppressed, because few things made him more angry than oppression. Peacemaking is an invitation to find a Jesus-way forward to free people from oppression—not an invitation to silence people from talking about their oppression. May we hear the plight of our neighbors and understand how we might best help them.
Jamin Bradley 
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