An Unguarded Tongue
Our focus verse this month is Proverbs 13:3: “He who guards his mouth protects his life. He who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.”
I shouldn’t be the one writing this article. My mouth has been a constant battle in my life.
When I was younger, I was a habitual liar. I lied about anything and everything. Looking back, I think I just wanted to have words to say. I also wanted to impress people…or shock them. I wish I could say exactly what my motivation was, but I think mostly lying was just a bad habit. I was mean and had no regard for the outcome or impact of my words.
I’m ashamed of the things I’ve said. I believe that God has forgiven me, but my words were hurtful to others, malicious at times and always careless.
My mouth was in charge. The guard was off duty, and my tongue ran the show - distinct and independent of any serious thought.
And it was an awful way to live. It’s constant turmoil and chaos…it’s ruinous.
Much of the wisdom in Proverbs tells us how to deal with our words. In Proverbs 6, verses 16-19, Solomon provides us with a list of seven things that God hates. I think we would be foolish to ignore that 3 of them deal directly with things that are spoken: “a lying tongue…a false witness who speaks lies, and the one who sows discord among brethren.” These are in a list, mind you, which also contains those who believe themselves superior to everyone around them, those who would murder in cold blood, those who make no attempt to resist sin, and those whose hearts delight in bringing destruction on those around them.
It’s not a small matter.
The real problem isn’t, of course, our tongues; it’s our hearts.
In Matthew 15, Jesus has a similar conversation with His disciples after a run-in with the scribes and Pharisees. The Pharisees, “false witness[es] who speak lies”, had been publicly accusing Jesus of blasphemy for any number of things - forgiving sins (Matt 9:3), eating with publicans and sinners (Matt 9:11), breaking feast days (Matt 9:14), working in allegiance with hell to cast out demons (Matt 12:24), and breaking the Sabbath (Matt 12:10). Now they come to Him angry that His disciples have failed to wash their hands before they ate.
This was a tradition, not part of the law; however, they were scandalized that One who was called a Rabbi would allow such a breach even of tradition.
Christ points out that they have used their traditions to bypass the law, specifically, He points to the law to honor one’s father and mother, which the Pharisees handily get around by saying that they had pledged their money to the temple…eventually. No one could call them on the debt, but that money was not to be expended even to support one’s nearest relatives. And so the obligation to care for family members was avoided.
Jesus calls them hypocrites: their words don’t match their actions. He says in Matthew 15:8, “These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.”
The Pharisees worship outwardly, publicly, constantly in the streets and the synagogues seeming to be devoted, but they aren’t: “...their heart is far from Me.” They have no true love for God. It’s just words and routine actions.
They never listen to God’s own words and take them into their hearts. They are so busy with their own ideas and words - the utterances of their own hearts - that they never see God’s heart at all.
They don’t care what God requires of them. They want everyone to hear them, to follow them, to listen and be taught by them. And their predicament is dire.
Jesus tells the crowd that they need to understand one thing; it is not what goes into someone’s mouth that defiles them, but it is what comes out.
When the disciples come to Jesus to tell Him that His words were upsetting to these men, Jesus tells them not to worry; these men are blind guides who will lead others who are also determined to be blind into a ditch. He goes on to explain that the words that come out of a man’s mouth come from the heart, and that is how we are defiled.
Our words can sound good and still spell disaster for our souls. You don’t have to tell malicious lies about others to have an unguarded tongue. You can live a lie about yourself - trying to use words that mask the intentions of your heart.
In this media age, we don’t just speak words to those around us; we speak to 1000s of “friends” at a time. These are our words, too. What are we trying to convey? What would we have others believe about us? How many words do we spend trying to build a “reality TV” version of ourselves? Where there’s never a bad photo or negative comment that can’t be edited. And there are just so many words!
I decided to see what studies say about how much we talk, how many words we say in a day on average. In “Who Talks More, Men or Women? The Answer Isn’t As Obvious As You Think”, an article in Time magazine from July 16, 2014, the author, Joan Greve, looked into a study done at Northeastern University where researchers were trying to learn which gender uses more words. There was an old study which said that women spoke around 20,000 words a day while men only spoke 7,000. While those statistics seem to have been debunked, the current research is interesting. The study at Northeastern showed that the genders both speak around 16,000 - 17,000 words a day with men speaking fewer words on average, and the situations in which genders are more likely to speak are telling. Men are more likely to speak in academic or professional settings. Most of their words revolve around task accomplishment. Women, however, speak more in casual conversation in social settings. And secrets and gossip are more likely to be part of female conversation.
In an interview about her book You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships, sociologist Deborah Tannen explains that secrets and gossip are actually positive parts of female friendships. There’s some worldly wisdom for you! She believes that women bond over breaking confidences shared with them and that we are more likely to betray a “friend” than a man because we have a competitive need to know more than others and to know it first.
What a sad commentary on female relationships! Ladies, we need to examine what we say, and we need to examine why we say it. Our words can do much damage to our work in the kingdom. In examining our words, we are examining our hearts. If our hearts are what they should be, then cruel words, angry words, malicious words won’t come from our mouths because they aren’t in our hearts. We won’t try to deceive others or ourselves about who we are and why we do the things we do.
But we have to be honest about our conversations. An awful lot of gossip takes place disguised as love, but that costume only fools the gossips; it doesn’t fool the subject of the gossip! And it can, in fact, sow discord among the brethren which, if you’ll remember, is one of the things that God hates.
Sitting around and chatting isn’t my strong suit. One reason is that it is stressful. I find it exhausting to have words coming out of my mouth that I must closely monitor. I have first hand experience at how fast my mouth gets away from me. I’m not foolish enough to think I can’t fall into the same trap again. I have and I do, and it is ruinous. Ruinous to me and potentially to those who hear my sharp words.
There’s a Chinese proverb that says that a woman’s words are her sword which she never allows to get rusty. May we let the sword of our sharp words rust in its scabbard! The only sword we want to brandish is God’s sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. That is the sword with which He has equipped us. Amy wrote about the sword of the Spirit last year, and one of her points was that the sword must first be turned inward. We use it on ourselves first - and frequently, allowing it to divide the flesh from the spirit and show us the intentions of our own hearts.
Our words indicate what is in our hearts. Let us wield not a sword of hateful, deceptive words, but rather let our sword be of the Spirit, dividing our hearts first, and then, helping us lead others to Christ. Lord, help our hearts be full of love so that our tongues will speak truth and mercy and always, always Your gospel of peace.