I keep seeing the same rhetorical move, and it’s making me furious.

An ICE agent shoots someone on video. The administration lies about it in ways that would make Orwell blush. And the response from certain Christian commentators? “Let’s not fan the flames.” “We shouldn’t rush to conclusions.” “There are extremes on both sides.”

This posture has the appearance of wisdom. It sounds mature, measured, above the fray. It positions the speaker as the reasonable adult in the room while everyone else loses their heads.

I used to find this kind of thing persuasive. I don’t anymore.

The Prophets Weren’t “Balanced”

When Jeremiah looked at the religious leaders of his day, he didn’t commend their evenhandedness. He condemned them: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).

Ezekiel was even more vivid. He compared false prophets to builders who stack bricks without mortar and then slap whitewash over the mess to hide the defects. The wall looks fine until the storm comes. Then it collapses and kills everyone inside. The prophets who said “everything’s fine” bear responsibility for the destruction (Ezekiel 13:10-15).

Amos thundered against those who “hate the one who reproves in the gate, and abhor the one who speaks the truth” (5:10). His demand wasn’t for balance between the wealthy and the poor they exploited. It was for justice to “roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Isaiah pronounced woe on “those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (5:20). That’s a precise description of what happens when we treat truth and lies as equivalent perspectives deserving equal airtime.

The prophetic pattern isn’t balance. It’s asymmetric compassion: harsh confrontation of the powerful, tender care for the vulnerable. The prophets didn’t split the difference between oppressor and oppressed. They took sides.

Jesus Wasn’t “Civil”

And then there’s Jesus, who we sometimes domesticate into a nice teacher of timeless spiritual truths.

Matthew 23 is, to put it mildly, not a model of civil discourse. Jesus called the religious leaders “serpents,” “brood of vipers,” “whitewashed tombs,” “blind guides,” and “hypocrites.” Seven times he pronounced “woe” on them. He overturned tables in the temple in what one scholar called “prophetic provocation.”

Yet this same Jesus was “gentle and humble in heart” toward the weary and burdened. He welcomed tax collectors and sinners. He wept over Jerusalem even while condemning it.

The pattern is consistent: confrontation with the powerful who abuse their position, compassion for the marginalized they exploit. When Jesus said “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), he was acknowledging what prophetic truth does. It creates division. The gospel forces a choice.

Bonhoeffer on the Failure of “the Reasonable Ones”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood this from inside the nightmare of Nazi Germany. In 1942, hiding an essay in his attic before his arrest, he wrote that “the huge masquerade of evil has thrown all ethical concepts into confusion.” Evil appeared disguised as light, good deeds, historical necessity, social justice.

He was particularly harsh on what he called “the reasonable ones”:

“The failure of ’the reasonable ones’—those who think, with the best of intentions and in their naive misreading of reality, that with a bit of reason they can patch up a structure that has come out of joint—is apparent. With their ability to see impaired, they want to do justice on every side, only to be crushed by the colliding forces without having accomplished anything at all.”

The reasonable person, trying to be fair to everyone, accomplishes nothing and gets crushed.

His alternative was stark:

“Who stands firm? Only the one whose ultimate standard is not his reason, his principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue; only the one who is prepared to sacrifice all of these when, in faith and in relationship to God alone, he is called to obedient and responsible action.”

Bonhoeffer also warned against those who flee to “the sanctuary of private virtuousness”:

“But he must close his eyes and mouth to the injustice around him. He can remain undefiled by the consequences of responsible action only by deceiving himself.”

That’s what “both-sides” arguments often are: a way of staying clean while others suffer.

MLK on the White Moderate

Martin Luther King Jr. named this dynamic from a Birmingham jail cell in 1963:

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

King distinguished between negative peace (the absence of tension) and positive peace (the presence of justice). The moderate prefers calm over change. But calm that preserves injustice isn’t peace at all.

When critics called him “extreme,” King reframed the question:

“Was not Jesus an extremist for love?… Was not Amos an extremist for justice?… The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.”

His warning still echoes:

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

Tutu, Freire, Romero: The Impossibility of Neutrality

Desmond Tutu put it most memorably:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Paulo Freire said essentially the same thing:

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

And Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was murdered while celebrating Mass, asked the question that haunts me:

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what gospel is that?”

When critics accused Romero of “interfering in politics,” they made the same move people make today. Reduce prophetic witness to partisanship, and you can dismiss it without engaging its substance.

What This Isn’t

I want to be careful here. I’m not saying every situation is simple or that discernment is unnecessary. Genuine wisdom involves timing, strategy, knowing when and how to act effectively.

But there’s a difference between genuine prudence and cowardly inaction dressed as wisdom. The latter looks like:

  • Appealing to “process” when evidence is already clear.
  • Calling for “more information” when sufficient information exists to act.
  • Distributing blame equally between those wielding state violence and those protesting it.
  • Prioritizing institutional safety over prophetic witness.
  • Confusing controversy-avoidance with peacemaking.

The Gospel Demands a Choice

Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology, stated it plainly:

“It is not possible to remain neutral in the face of poverty and the resulting just claims of the poor; a posture of neutrality would, moreover, mean siding with the injustice and oppression in our midst.”

This isn’t partisan politics. It’s the gospel. Jesus told us that how we treat “the least of these” is how we treat him. The sheep and the goats aren’t sorted by their theological positions but by whether they fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner.

When the stranger is being shot by federal agents, when the administration is lying about it, when the powerful are crushing the vulnerable, there is no neutral ground. There is only complicity or witness.

I understand why “both-sides” thinking is attractive. I held versions of it for years. It lets you feel wise without taking risks. It lets you maintain relationships across political divides. It lets you avoid the messiness of actually standing for something.

But the prophets didn’t take that path. Jesus didn’t take that path. Bonhoeffer and King and Romero didn’t take that path. They understood that some situations demand not balance but witness. Not calm but crisis. Not peace-keeping but justice-making.

“They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

I don’t want to be one of those healers.