Cheap Talk And Free Speech Series

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” You’ve all heard that saying, haven’t you? We’ve probably all used it, in fact - usually when a child comes home from school upset because someone called her a bad name. We do distinguish between words and actions. That is what free speech is all about. You can be punished for burning down the police station, but not for marching up and down in front of it carrying signs.

And yet we all know that it really isn’t true, it isn’t true that “words can never hurt you.” In fact, some of the deepest wounds, and the hardest to heal, are those that enter through the ear and scar the soul. That’s when your mom says, “You’ve been a disappointment to me since the day you were born,” or your dad says “Can’t you ever do anything right?” or your teacher says, “he’ll never amount to anything,” or you overhear a kindly aunt say, “It’s a pity she’s so homely.”

Those words leave wounds that last forever. And yet the kind of words we hear from our leaders can inflict damage even worse than those personal wounds, damage that spreads throughout society and can corrupt generations upon generations of hearers. In James’ day, and in the church to whom he is speaking, teachers were people of enormous influence and prestige. But the principle applies to any leader, whether they are teachers, politicians, or ministers, nowadays actors and journalists as well - all those who live by words. Their words can influence thousands, sometimes tens of thousands and even millions. The advent of social media has multiplied the harm words can do, whether actively malicious or simply careless.

Most commentators and preachers break this chapter into two parts, the first part on one on the damage that we can do with our tongues, and the second part on wisdom. But I think the chapter is all of a piece. Because he begins with teachers, and he ends with wisdom. And what is the primary task of a teacher? Isn’t it to equip their students - in fact, all those who listen to them - to think and act and live in accordance with some particular definition of wisdom?

Words have power. And whether that power accomplishes good or evil depends on where it comes from, and what it is intended to do.

That is why James begins this chapter with a warning to those who aspire to be teachers. He is telling them to be wary of the power they wield, and warns them that they will be judged according to what they do with it. He then goes on to explain the nature of the power of the tongue, goes on to describe the different sources of that power, and closes with a prescription for distinguishing between right and wrong use of power. And language has power. In fact, language IS power. That is why Jesus is referred to as the WORD of God: because it is through THE WORD that the world came into being.

Scholar John Burgess writes that “The Christian tradition has . . . insisted that the commandments make a total demand on us, that they set forth God’s claim on every area of our lives. [To this end] Christian interpreters made three interpretive moves. Each commandment was broadened, to represent a whole category of behaviors, internalized to include attitudes and motivations, and reversed: each positive implies a negative, each negative implies a positive.” And so forbidding the use of language to damage your neighbor includes the commandment to use language to benefit your neighbor. We are stewards of language, responsible to God, just as we are stewards of the creation.

There are many different ways in which teachers and other leaders can misuse language. Walter Brueggeman identifies three faces of “false witness”, adding that all distort reality in a way that is actually deadly to the hearer. Euphemism is the first. It consists of describing an ugly reality in such a way that it actually looks attractive. My own favorite such distortion is “choice,” as in “pro-choice.” The second kind of distortion which corrupts our society is, Brueggeman says, advertising. Advertising corrupts because it convinces us to live our lives based on a deceptive picture of reality. And finally, propaganda. Propaganda is political. It presents a single point of view as if it were all there was to think about a subject, in order to give people a false sense of certainty about their beliefs, and to generate unthinking loyalty, usually accompanied by unthinking hostility to the other side.

Just in case you think that either I or Brueggeman is expanding the right use of language far beyond where the Bible wants to take us, just look at the OT. Isaiah condemns the leaders of Israel, saying: “Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” [Is 5:20] That’s an example of euphemism.