You know the feeling. You’re just scrolling—maybe killing time, maybe looking for a laugh—and suddenly you’re deep in the comments section of a post that’s gone off the rails. Someone’s pushing a conspiracy theory, someone else is defending a leader you can’t stand, and before you know it, your heart rate is up and your faith feels a little more complicated than it did five minutes ago.
If you’re exhausted, you’re not alone. Outrage is everywhere, and it’s contagious. The internet has trained us to believe that the loudest voice wins, that if you’re not clapping back, you’re complicit. But here’s the twist: in the kingdom of God, the metrics are upside down.
Somewhere along the way, the church started to believe that being loud equals being faithful. That if you’re not making noise, you’re not making a difference. But scroll through Scripture—or, honestly, just look at Jesus—and you’ll find something subversive: wisdom that whispers, truth that doesn’t trend, a Savior who could calm storms and also walk away from a fight.
Proverbs 17:27 says, “The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint, and whoever has understanding is even-tempered.” Translation: spiritual maturity doesn’t need a megaphone.
This isn’t a call to spiritual witness protection. Christians are called to be bold, but not obnoxious. There’s a difference between being a light in the darkness and blinding people with a spotlight. We don’t need more volume. We need more wisdom.
James 3 sketches out wisdom from above as “pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” Compare that to your average comment section—even the “Christian” ones. It’s not exactly a fruit basket.
Richard Rohr got it.
“We all become well-disguised mirror images of anything that we fight too long or too directly,” he said. “That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot.”
In other words, the more we react, the more we risk becoming the very thing we’re fighting against. Outrage is a shape-shifter; it can turn even the most well-intentioned faith into just another echo in the noise.
The internet rewards hot takes, not holy ones. It elevates the quickest clapback, not the quietest wisdom. But Christians are supposed to resist that urge. We’re not called to be influencers—we’re called to be witnesses. There’s a difference. Witnesses don’t scream. They testify.
Rohr was blunt about the dangers of performative faith: “Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.”
Ouch. But he’s right. It’s easy to mistake noise for transformation, to think that being right is the same as being Christlike.
“Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control, power, money, pleasure and security,” Rohr said. “Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often give a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self.”
If our faith is just another way to win arguments or boost our own image, we’ve missed the point.
So what’s the alternative? Prayer.
Sounds simplistic, sure. But it’s the not-so-secret weapon we need to wield daily.
“Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise,” Rohr said.
That’s not passivity—it’s discipline. It’s the kind of quiet that changes us from the inside out, so that when we do speak, our words actually mean something.
To be clear, this isn’t a call to disappear into silence. There are times to speak boldly, especially when confronting injustice or defending the vulnerable. But boldness without wisdom is just noise. And in a world addicted to outrage, maybe the most radical thing a Christian can do is listen more than they speak.
“All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not,” Rohr said. “Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need.”
The world doesn’t need another Christian going viral for being right. It needs Christians who are wise enough to know when to speak, when to stay silent, and when to show up with something more powerful than volume: the fruit of the Spirit. Peace. Gentleness. Self-control.
Being loud might get you followers. Being wise might actually point people to Jesus.
