The Right Thing to Say

The Right Thing to Say--May 31, 2018

"Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to all who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgive you." [Ephesians 4:29-32]

The Holy Spirit has a way of pushing us to re-examine things in our lives we have stopped paying attention to, in order to make us more into the likeness of Christ.

And one place the Spirit is likely to start is with our mouths, and what comes out of them.

Americans pride themselves on their First Amendment right to “freedom of speech,” which we usually think of in terms of a negative freedom, as in “You can’t tell me what to say,” or “Nobody can censor or silence what I want to express.”  We have built two hundred-plus years of legal precedent on finding newer and wider ways to let people say whatever they want to say, and we have a tradition of protecting nearly anything that can be counted as “expression,” whether it be of noble and profound content, crass advertising, intentionally provocative gestures and profane comments, or even vile and derogatory remarks, because of the fear that once you start putting limits on “acceptable” speech, you will stifle the good ideas while to trying weed out the drivel.  And that makes a certain sense--there was wisdom in the Framers' decision to assure their citizens that they wouldn't be rounded up by the government for expressing opinions that are critical or unpopular.

But as is true with just about everything else in life, there is a minus that goes along with the plus here. And one of the costs of thinking of our right of free speech only in negative terms of "Nobody should be able to tell me what to say," is that we are not always terribly wise or good at discerning what would be good to say in this moment. So we have bent over backwards as a society to make sure people can say whatever they want… but we haven’t spent much time thinking through what is worth saying, or how anybody would know what is worth saying. 

There’s another hallmark of the age we live in: as people who live in the era of social media, we are practically goaded into saying, publishing, posting, and messaging people without any thought of why someone else needs to know what I had for breakfast, or what the consequences might be if I say something that I cannot take back before it goes viral. We live in a time when we can spread messages that claim to be factual without knowing whether they are true or not, and we are increasingly told not to even care whether our words, facts, quotes, and messages are true or not--only whether they feel like they reinforce what we already want to think. We have learned that we have the “right” to say whatever we please, but we have not learned how to discern what is right to say.

Love, by its nature, doesn’t start by demanding its rights.  Love looks for the good of the other, rather than itself—or rather, love recognizes that I can only find what is to my benefit when I am looking to the benefit of those around me.  That’s not merely an emotion—that includes a whole way of thinking.  It means the conscious, deliberate, intentional practice of doing good to others, and looking for ways to show them kindness.  That takes thought.  That takes creativity.  That takes paying attention.  It takes patience and self-restraint.

And above all, it takes the Spirit's presence.

Now, as Ephesians reminds us, the followers of Jesus have been marked with the Spirit, and the Spirit already dwells within us.  So nobody is saying, "Use nice words or else the Spirit will vote you out of the Heaven Club."  Rather, Ephesians says that our words have the capacity, not only to hurt others... but actually to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Whoa.  That's a big deal.

Ephesians is saying that our words have the power, not simply to tear other people down, but in fact to break the very heart of God, to "grieve the Holy Spirit," when we use them to tear other people down (usually in the attempt to puff ourselves up).  The Bible is much less worried about whether we say "potty" words that would get bleeped on prime-time television, and much more concerned about whether we are recklessly wrathful in our words and hurt one another.   And because the Spirit dwells within us always, then we are always responsible for our words--there is no time when we are "off the clock," "not on duty," or "just venting frustrations" on one of the many screens and keyboards at our disposal.  We are always called to practice love... in actions, and in words.  These verses from Ephesians dare us to take that kind of thinking and put it into practice with your words, too.

So, Ephesians would tell us, we may need to unlearn some things, as the Spirit cultivates love in us.

The Spirit will help us unlearn the impulse of the Facebook age to say something without thinking about the people to whom I am saying it, what purpose I am saying it for, and what benefit comes of saying it.  

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking without thinking critically and having your own personal content editor.  

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking anything that could harm someone else, even if it plays to your gain or makes you feel important by saying it. 

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of saying whatever you want because you can insist, “I have the right to say whatever I want, and you can’t stop me," regardless of whether what you want to say is true, helpful, out-of-context, or edifying.

And the Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking without a thought for the consequences of what you say.  Consequences matter, because they affect people.  And people matter, the people I like and agree with... and the people I do not like, and everybody else.

So instead of thinking that the world owes me a hearing (because even the Bill of Rights only guarantees me a right to speak without the government silencing me, not a right to have the whole world give me a platform to listen to me and hang on my every word), what if we started this day, and every day, with the question, “How could my words today give grace to someone else?”

That kind of speech is just what the world needs.  That is what will stand out in a world (and a world-wide-web) full of people talking just to hear themselves talk.

That’s what love sounds like—words that are carefully chosen because they will bless and heal.

Spirit of Truth and of Love, help me unlearn the self-centered ways of speaking with bitterness, wrath, and untruths, and train my mouth and my heart to speak in ways that build up and reflect Christ.