“…You’re Right”
When I lived abroad in Sheffield, England, I had a housemate named Benny from Germany, who was at the university for his Masters in Chemistry. Benny had blond hair, a bright smile, and overall a cheerful disposition. I remember one day in particular hearing him bound down the steps and waltz into the living room with a fishing pole. I raised an eyebrow. “Are you going fishing?” I asked. “I hope so!” he replied spryly. I must have looked at him inquisitively because he hastened to explain. “I’m gonna ride my bike to the local pub and ask the locals where’s a good fishing spot. I’m sure someone there can help point me in a good direction.” I smiled. Benny had this easy-going, trusting disposition that I admired. Whenever he was tackling a project or a task that would have made me anxious, he would say things like, “Someone will help me…” or “A door will open…” Reflecting on Benny, I have to imagine that he had heard these phrases somewhat frequently at some point in his life, and he had naturally adopted them as his own way of seeing the world.
I have another friend, whom I’ll call Jack, who strikes me as the opposite of Benny. Jack used to spend a lot of time on the road for his work, and he listened to a lot of podcasts and talk radio. When we would get together for lunch, he would sometimes become very animated as he discussed certain current events. His zeal surprised me, particularly as some of the things he was talking about seemed very removed from his own life. I’ve concluded that what was happening is he was reciting some of the talking points that he’d heard on the road. Jack is my friend, and nothing will change that, but I began to notice feeling drained after spending time with him. His talk was increasingly negative, filled with name-calling and criticism. It felt sort of like verbal warfare on various subsections of society.
Henry Ford is credited with the proverb: “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t…you’re right.” This adage taps into the ancient wisdom that words shape reality. Indeed, I would contend that the Bible is supremely aware of this dynamic. Consider how creation begins not with God flexing his muscles, but with God’s speech. Or consider how the gospel of John puts it: “In the beginning was the Word...”
In the case of my two friends, their habits of speech influenced the way they saw the world around them: whether other people were helpers or opponents, whether something could be done or couldn’t be done, whether the world was good or bad. We tend to think of speech as an outward movement, as an expression (or going out) of what is already inside of us. But what I see in these two friends invites me to consider that perhaps speech is also an inward movement, a consumption of something that is outside us. (It’s worth remembering that the words we speak are not in our possession. They were here long before we arrived on the scene. They have meanings we did not give them.) Perhaps the words we speak are like the food we eat. They go inside us, nurturing us (or not), shaping the way we grow.
Disproportionate
Influence
In today’s scripture, James uses three different analogies to describe the power of the tongue (that is, the power of speech). His first two analogies suggest positive possibilities for the tongue. First, James observes that the small bit that a rider puts in the horse’s mouth gives them the capability to guide the horse’s entire body. If you think about how strong a horse is (it’s no coincidence that today’s automobile engines are still discussed in terms of “horsepower”), it is incredible to consider that something just a few inches wide could harness that power. Next, James marvels at how a very small rudder can help to guide a ship, even through strong winds that would otherwise push the ship far off course. Together, these analogies—a horse bit and a ship’s rudder—appreciate that a small object can helpfully guide a much bigger object. Already, then, James has primed us to appreciate the disproportionate influence that a tongue has over our body and soul.
But James’ third and final analogy takes a dark turn. “The tongue is a fire,” James pronounces gravely. “How great a forest is set ablaze but such a small fire!” That which is capable of much good—of steering a ship through the storm, of guiding a horse on it course—is equally capable of much harm. It quickly becomes clear that, for James, this third analogy is the most accurate. More often than not, the tongue corrupts and wreaks havoc. His description culminates in calling the tongue “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (Ja 3:8).
It is worth remembering that in these analogies the tongue is compared to a small part that either helps or harms the larger body of which it is a part. So, in this last analogy, when James compares the tongue to a fire, the forest is not the larger community in which the words are spoken. The forest is the person of which the tongue is a part. What this means is that James is not making the rather common claim that our words can hurt other people (although I can only imagine James would acknowledge this to be true). He is, rather, making the claim that the primary victim of our wayward speech is us ourselves. We are poisoning our own hearts and minds with such speech.
In One Breath,
Blessing, and in the Next, a Curse
To make matters worse, James suggests that the tongue has a mind of its own. We can tame every creature on earth, he says, except for this wild animal in our mouths, this untamable, savage beast (Ja 3:7-8). For in one breath, he says, “we bless the Lord and Father,” and in the very next breath, “we curse people, made in the likeness of God” (Ja 3:9). This is the heart of the problem for James. What the tongue hurts most of all is our own faith in God. When our words belittle or curse or shame another person, we are effectively telling God to get lost. We are saying we don’t believe in God’s goodness.
Jesus says something similar when he warns that anyone who insults another person will be “liable to the council,” and that anyone who calls another person a “fool” will be “liable to the hell of fire” (Matt 5:22). When our words obscure the image of God in other people, we leave the kingdom of God ourselves and skirt the edges of a great, destructive fire. For what it’s worth, I don’t personally think of this fire as the punishment of a vindictive God. I think it is simply as a consequence. When our words warp our vision of the world so that we can no longer see God, then we will become increasingly alienated from God. Call it hell or despair or a great fire or whatever else you’d like, it’s one and the same…a self-imposed separation from God.
Who Will Rescue Us?
I have to confess, James’ extremely negative view of speech leaves me feeling rather pessimistic. “No one can tame the tongue,” James insists (Ja 3:8). I find myself asking exasperatedly, along with Paul, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24).
Paul’s answer to his own question—“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 7:25)—is perhaps a good starting point for making sense of the quandary in which James has put us. That we are not able to tame the tongue on our own—that we are not able to speak well and to make the proper use of the gift of speech on our own—does not mean that we are incapable of speaking well and rightly. It just means that we need help.
My Old Testament seminary professor, Dr. Biddle, wrote a book on the Old Testament concept of sin. His analysis yielded a very different picture from the typical juridical view of sin—the idea that sin is a personal act of wrongdoing for which a person is culpable. Instead his research found that much of the Old Testament views sin as what we might call a systemic phenomenon, almost like a pandemic, like the outbreak of an infectious disease. When a person sins, the sin is not limited to a single decision that they make. Rather, it is part of a larger chain of reaction, of cause and effect. (To see sin this way, we only have to think of how trauma and tragic behavior often repeats itself, as though it is a disease passed one from one generation to the next.)
This perspective of sin helps me to understand James’ extremely pessimistic view of speech. Put simply, our speech is diseased. Habits of name-calling, belittling, demeaning, shaming, and so on, are endemic to every language. But that doesn’t mean that the tongue itself (which God created) is wicked, or that speech itself is evil.
At the beginning of his letter, James repeatedly refers to our salvation in terms of God’s Word. “God gave us birth,” James says, “by the Word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures” (Ja 1:18). A few verses later, he exhorts his fellow Christ-followers: “Therefore…welcome with meekness the implanted Word that has the power to save your souls” (Ja 1:21). His point is clear. God’s Word can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. It is no coincidence that he also issues the instruction, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak” (Ja 1:19). If the speech of this world is diseased, then we need to be steeped in the Word of God before we speak. We need to be in the company of the One who spoke forgiveness to his enemies, who blessed those who cursed him, who prayed for those who would persecute him. The Word of God speaks a different language than our world. As followers of Christ, we are learning that language.
Despite James’ gloomy view of the tongue in today’s scripture, I find an extraordinary ray of hope in remembering that his first two analogies—the bit in the powerful horse’s mouth, and the rudder that guides a ship through the storm—these two analogies point at the salvific power of the tongue. When we are tossed by life’s waves, battered by the storm, the tongue has the power to guide us safely through the tempest. But as James makes clear, it is not so much our tongue, diseased as it is, that guides us through the storm. It is, rather, our mother tongue: the Word of God, our Lord’s way of speaking, the language of blessing, prayer, forgiveness, and grace. It has brought us safe thus far, and it will ultimately lead us home.
Prayer
Who came proclaiming good news,
Speaking a different language
Than the world
…
You are the vine,
We are the branches;
Help us to abide in you
And to learn from you
Our mother tongue,
God’s language of love.
Amen.
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