Snitches Get Stitches?!

 Have you ever had something that you just can’t get out of your mind? It hangs there in the back of your brain like a chicken string in-between your teeth. You know, the kind you have to saw out with dental floss. Where I grew up it’s called, “having something stuck in your craw”. That how I feel about the phrase, “snitches get stitches”.

I guess part of the problem resides in knowing the difference between letting someone know about a problem or injustice that needs to be righted, and a tattle-tale. A tattle-tale’s main motivation is to get someone else in trouble, either because of revenge or to draw attention away from themselves. The real motive is selfishness. This is the total opposite of informing authority (parent, teacher, police, whatever) because someone or their property is at risk. The motivation of the informer is to protect, or stop injustice.

So why would someone not say anything? I think the main reason is fear. It could be fear of being labeled as a tattle-tale or fear of retaliation. We live in a society where revenge is a real thing, and sometimes even celebrated by some. We see it in movies; it’s dramatized in police shows. But what is God’s view on this?

The Bible says in Philippians 2:3-4 that we should “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others”. James tells us “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (2:14-17) If it’s that important to the way a Christian should act, It follows that God can also protect use as we do the right thing.

History tells us the same thing. You may remember the quote: "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing". No one really know who said it, but President John F. Kennedy famously attributed the quote to Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman. Burke or not, history is riddled with times when silence caused great distress and people standing up helped pave the way for change. Too many times people just looked away because “they didn’t want to get involved”. The Holocaust, American racial atrocities, and reports of world genocide are just a few examples. 

So what will you choose? Myself I would rather be persecuted for standing in the gap and doing what’s right than cowering in a dark corner as a coward. But hey, I’ve made my choice.