Honoring John Lewis by Learning to Love Courageously
July 17th, a growing number of churches and faith communities observed what has become known as Good Trouble—an opportunity to remember the life and witness of Congressman John Lewis and to ask what faithful discipleship looks like in our own moment.
John Lewis often challenged us to make “good trouble, necessary trouble.” He wasn’t inviting chaos or outrage for its own sake. He was calling people into the courageous, disciplined work of love. Good trouble names those moments when conscience refuses to remain silent in the face of injustice.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America!”
– John Lewis
That strikes me as deeply biblical.
The Hebrew prophets were troublemakers. Jesus was a troublemaker. The apostles repeatedly found themselves in trouble because they insisted that love, justice, mercy, and the reign of God mattered more than the demands of empire or the comfort of religious respectability.
Perhaps the church has always been at its best when it has learned the difference between being troublesome and making good trouble.
Across the country, communities honored Lewis’s legacy in remarkably diverse ways. Some gathered for worship centered on justice, reconciliation, and the continuing work of civil rights. Others hosted educational conversations about voting rights and the history of nonviolent resistance. Many organized opportunities for civic engagement, wrote letters and postcards, registered voters, partnered with neighborhood organizations, served local communities, or participated in peaceful public witness. The movement’s organizers summarized the weekend with three simple words: Teach. Reach. Preach.
I appreciate that Good Trouble need not become another item on the church calendar. It is better understood as a spiritual posture.
It asks questions that followers of Jesus should never stop asking:
- Where has fear silenced love?
- Whose voices have we failed to hear?
- What injustice has become so familiar that we no longer notice it?
- What small act of courage is love inviting us toward today?
Not every act of good trouble makes headlines.
Sometimes it looks like standing beside a marginalized neighbor.
Sometimes it means speaking a difficult truth within our own family or congregation.
Sometimes it means showing up at a city council meeting, volunteering at a shelter, planting trees in a neglected neighborhood, advocating for affordable housing, welcoming refugees, or defending the dignity of those who are being dehumanized.
Often, it simply means refusing to surrender our imagination to cynicism.
As a practical theologian, I have become increasingly convinced that faithful presence is rarely passive. Love has a public life. Shalom is never merely private. The flourishing of all and everything requires communities willing to embody another way of being human together.
John Lewis once reminded us, “Freedom is not a state; it is an act.”
Perhaps discipleship is much the same.
It is not merely something we believe.
It is something we practice.
May we have the wisdom to discern when peace requires quietness—and when peace requires courage.
And may we, in the way of Jesus, never be afraid to make a little good trouble.
Peace… via good trouble, dwight
