What Is Worth Saying--February 16, 2021

What Is Worth Saying--February 16, 2021

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God." [Colossians 3:16]

It's not about having the "right" (or not) to say whatever you want.  It's about knowing what is worth saying in the first place.

This is something that American Christians like myself sometimes have a hard time being clear about, because we are taught from a very early age to see everything--and I mean everything--in terms of negative freedom.  "Nobody can tell me what to do!"  "It's my right to do as I please!" "I can say whatever I want, and nobody should have the ability to scold or chastise me for saying anything I feel like!"  It's all freedom in the negative sense--insisting that someone else can't stop me from doing what I want.  But honestly, the Christian faith has never been all that interested in just negative freedoms; you don't find the writers of the New Testament, or certainly not Jesus, going around insisting they can do or say whatever they want in the name of "their rights."  Instead, you get Jesus creating a community that asks, rather differently, "What is worth us speaking?  What message of good news is worth having our lips?  What songs of praise, what tunes of liberation, can we not keep from singing?"

And that's a question we need to get better at asking, especially these days.  Sometimes we get so hung up on demanding that we have the freedom, the "right," to say anything we like--even when it's mean, hurtful, incorrect, harmful to others, or just plain untrue--that we don't bother to ask what the biblical writers, like the voice here from Colossians, think is worth our spending our breath to speak.

It is true, of course, that we live in a country that prides itself on rules (in particular, the First Amendment to the Constitution) that say the government cannot "abridge" the right to freedom of speech.  And that's all well and good--there are lots of reasons we don't want the government to throw people in jail for criticizing their leaders, or speaking up for the oppressed, or saying something provocative.  History is littered with examples of the dangers of giving powerful people the ability to silence their critics, or to burn at the stake the ones who dared suggest that the Earth went around the Sun, for example.  But there's a huge difference between saying, "The government can't throw me in jail for saying something mean or unpopular" and deciding it's a good idea to deliberately be a jerk, or hateful, or cruel to someone else.  In other words, just because the government can't punish me for saying terrible things (at least most terrible things--I can still theoretically be punished for shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or for provoking a riot, and rightly so), it doesn't mean it's a good idea for me to say terrible things.  We live in a country where I can't be thrown in prison for using a racial slur, for example, but if I talk that way, it is a good and right thing for other people to call me out on it and to refuse to do business with me until I understand why it's wrong and change my behavior.  We live under a set of laws that says I am legally permitted to say factually incorrect things, but no one is required to give me a platform or a megaphone to amplify my voice when I tell misinformation, or worse, lie to people.  But the better question is this:  what is worth me saying?  What is worthy of being found on my lips, if I claim to be a disciple of Christ?

And for the followers of Jesus, that's just it--this was never about demanding our "rights" to have the freedom to be mean or hateful.  It's always been about choosing the right words--Christ-like words, in particular--to be found on our lips, rather than rotten ones.  It's fine that we live in a country where we are legally permitted to be hateful jerks to other people, but that doesn't mean it is the right thing to be.  We are called to Christ-likeness.  We always have been.

That's the missing piece for so many conversations I hear these days.  We can be so quick to snap at someone who holds us accountable when our words are hurtful or harmful to someone else, when maybe what we need first is to listen to their point and be considerate of the power of our words to build someone else up... or to tear them down.  We have this tendency of lashing out at the people who love us enough to tell us when our words have caused harm to someone else (or to them directly), and we end up shifting blame to them for being "too sensitive," or "too worried about being politically correct," or "too easily offended," when maybe they cared about us enough to try to get us to stop being inconsiderate jerks to someone else we hadn't given thought to.  And that's just it--when I focus on the rights-based negative freedom of "You can't tell me what to do, and you can't stop me from saying whatever I want!" I am making myself the center of the universe.  Christ himself begs to differ--he is the true center of all things, and because of how he loves, he calls me to put the needs and well-being of others before my childish impulse to say every stupid thing that pops into my head.

So when the writer of Colossians here says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly," it's not simply a matter of memorizing and spitting out Bible verses (because, again, let's be honest here--Bible verses can be "weaponized" in ways that don't fit with the character of Jesus, and he will have no truck with that).  It's instead about letting Jesus' way of speaking becoming our way of speaking.  It's about letting the song on our lips be one of the Good News of God's grace in Christ, rather than insisting we have the "rights" to say things that are mean, spiteful, hateful, or untrue.

In a way, it's rather like that cliche saying you find on internet memes and social media that goes, "In a world where you can choose to be anything, be kind."  For the followers of Jesus, it's never been simply about having the negative freedom to say whatever cruel, destructive, ignorant, or hateful thing you want--it's about the positive freedom for something.  It's the freedom for speaking love, singing grace, shouting hope, whispering peace, declaring forgiveness.  So, in a culture where you are allowed to say anything... what is worth saying?

When I put my thoughts through that filter, it changes how I speak.  It's not about any nefarious or overbearing outside forces "censoring" me--not the government, not some imaginary guardians of political correctness, and not the fellow with the bleeping button at the FCC.  It's about me doing the difficult but important work of asking, "What speaks goodness into the world, rather than rottenness?  What will build up? What will speak of justice, of mercy, of Christ?"  And with that reframing, it becomes clear: this has never been about demanding the right to be arrogant jerks or hateful bigots in the name of "freedom."  It is always about letting the word of Christ dwell so richly in us that Christ-like words come from our mouths, in speech and song and shout.

That's the kind of person I want to be.  Today, and every day.  How about you?

Lord Jesus, reign in our speaking, our thinking, our singing, and our loving.  Guide what we say, and open our ears to hear the insights of others who help us to see how our words affect others.