goes around with crooked speech,
winking the eyes, shuffling the feet,
pointing the fingers,
with perverted mind devising evil,
continually sowing discord;
on such a one calamity will descend suddenly;
in a moment, damage beyond repair.” NRSV
I grew up on Saturday morning (black and white) westerns where the good guys all wore white hats and the black guys all wore black hats. (Life was simpler in those days.) The fact is, while that kind of behavior stereotyping may make for good entertainment, it doesn’t serve us in real life. All behavior has a purpose; people aren’t just perverse (though they may seem so) simply because they want to be perverse.
In other words, while people may appear to be scoundrels or villains, there is a purpose in their behavior. They may be afraid (usually); they may be angry (possibly); they may even not feel well. And that being the case, there is the potential within all of us to be “a scoundrel and a villain.”
Solomon ain’t just talkin’ about the guys in black hats!
I’m not always as loving, as forgiving, as charitable (and ultimately as trusting of the Father) as I ought to be. And when those times bubble up in my life, I am often the one with the “crooked speech.” Oh, I certainly don’t intend for what I say to bring about evil. Necessarily. It’s just that some particular person has harmed me or threatened me or even (just) disturbed me and I want those around to know how innocent I am and how guilty that person is. So I point fingers. I even might fantasize about how some evil might befall them. Certainly, rather than sowing peace for that person, I’m trying to sow discord. And often, as a result, I’m caught with my foot in my mouth: calamity that suddenly descends, sometimes even creating damage beyond repair.
My tongue gets me into trouble more than I care to admit.
James talks about the difficult discipline of controlling one’s words:
“The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (3:6b-10 NRSV).
Growing up we were taught a saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” In a similar fashion, I try to teach my students: “If what someone says about you is true, then it’s true and you shouldn’t be upset. But if what they say about you isn’t true, their saying it doesn’t make it true.”
But the fact is, words hurt. Whether or not we allow them to hurt us is often beside the point. But more importantly, we use words to try to control, rather than trusting God. If we truly believe that God will bring us justice, if we truly believe that He will provide regardless of our circumstances, if we truly believe that we can rest in our peace with Him, then we would feel no need to try to harm someone else. And we certainly wouldn’t justify ourselves by saying that it was only something we said; that we are better than those who harm physically because we only spoke.
I think that, as a Christian, I need to be much more self-reflective and even brutal with how I evaluate my life and my actions. I need to see my sins as sins and deal with them accordingly. Only then, when I realize that even the softest word spoken to bring pain to another, can I really acknowledge that, in that moment, I was a scoundrel and villain and desperately in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).
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