“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.
Jeremiah attacks political propaganda, saying to the leaders of Judah who counseled alliances with foreign powers to protect Jerusalem from Babylon, saying “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” [Jer 6:13-14]
It is true that the prophets do not cry out against advertising, but they certainly recognize that people would rather entertain themselves with pleasant illusions than to face up to the truth. Furthermore, Isaiah doesn’t absolve the people, pointing out that they are willing participants in their own deception. “For they are a rebellious people,” says Isaiah, “faithless children, children who will not hear the instruction of the LORD; who say to the seers, “Do not see”; and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.” [Is 30:9:10]
And so Walter Brueggeman is quite right when he explains that “The requirement of truth-telling is matured by the prophets, by enlarging its scope to include royal reality with its penchant for distorted public policy. . . . Now it is the great organs of news and information in society being managed to serve distorted public ends, calculated to deceive on a grand scale. . . . The voices of accepted legitimacy present a fake reality, with failed fact disguised as workable fantasy.” Fake news is not a recent invention.
Advertising and propaganda have a lot in common. Both use mass media to extend their reach and to saturate the hearer with a single message that controls future behavior. Ideas like “gender identity” and “cultural appropriation” and “white privilege” have invaded our cultural landscape in the same way that advertising jingles did at the dawn of the radio age. They don’t require thinking, they just take root. Language misused becomes a virus that eats away at our thought processes.
After James catches our attention with the warning to teachers to beware of what they teach, lest they be judged, he shows us in very powerful and evocative terms just how powerful words actually are.
First of all, they have power over our own selves. “Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.” [v. 2] That’s because it’s easier to control our bodies than our tongues. As Jesus pointed out, “it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” [Lk 6:45] It is what we say in our unguarded moments that betray what we really think and feel and show what we are really like.“Slips of the tongue,” says author David Nystrom, “may not in fact be innocent or harmless, but may very well represent the initial stages of that biological growth of evil,” against which James has warned his readers from the beginning of his letter.
But then he goes on to show how much damage the tongue can do to his hearers, to the church, and from the church to the world. “Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.” [v. 4] That metaphor is intended to show that as small and seemingly insignificant a word might be, it can have a tremendous effect. The Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes said “give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.” He was speaking of a lever, a very simple tool, but it applies to politicians and other public figures as well. If you have a forum, you can move the world. And too many evil men – and women - have done just that.
James’ next metaphor is even more powerful. “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.” [v. 5-6]
Novelist and theologian Dorothy Sayers wrote during Hitler’s rise to power. She saw what a conflagration can be ignited when conditions are right, when the heart is dry and the wind comes from the wrong direction. She says,“When we first began to realise the way in which the common sense of Europe had been undermined and battered down by Nazi propaganda, we were astonished as well as horrified, and yet there was nothing astonishing about it. It was simply another exhibition of ruthless force: the employment of a very powerful weapon by experts who understood it perfectly against people who were not armed to resist it and had never really understood that it was a weapon at all.” She goes on to say, “The language of the imagination can never be inert; as with every other living force, you must learn to handle it or it will handle you. “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master - that’s all.”
And that is the question. Who is your master? It will come out in speech. James quotes Jesus speaking when he asks “Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.” [v 12]
Gentleness is not the only criterion by which to judge speech. In fact, it is far from being infallible. As we noted earlier, the prophets in Jeremiah’s time “treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” Jesus himself did not hesitate to call a spade a spade, when necessary, calling the Pharisees vipers and whited sepulchres, calling King Herod a fox, and so on.
John Calvin, in his sermon series on the Ten Commandments, said “When people are ruining themselves, it is indeed improper for us to conceal [it], for us to cover their vices with charity. . . . When we want to have friendship with men, we usually flatter them. We know that in one way or another they are offensive to God, yet we tolerate it; just as we want people to spare us, we also put up with the evil in our friends. . . . The world has come to the point that it seems that we are not good friends and are not faithful and loyal to those with whom we associate unless we acquiesce in their favor when they are wrong. When they are guilty and we ought to be calling this to their attention and chastising them, we turn to eloquent perjury instead.”
So “being nice” is not a right use of language. Telling the truth is, in fact, the first key indicator. But even truth is not enough by itself. Some people positively relish nosing out their neighbors’ faults, and making sure that everyone hears about them. Telling the truth must be accompanied by love, and preceded by telling the truth about oneself. And this takes us back to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus points out that being poor in spirit is the place where we all must begin. We are only equipped to tell unpleasant truths to our neighbors when we have been equally honest with ourselves.
Being honest with ourselves not only protects us from speaking in a way that dishonors God and destroys community, it protects us from those who are using language to deceive and manipulate.
It is hard to be honest with ourselves about such internal poisons as “bitter envy and selfish ambition.” [v 14] It is equally easy to accuse others of those motives when their words do not please us. That is why Jeremiah’s enemies made him the villain; he said things they didn’t want to hear, and since they couldn’t discredit his arguments, they had to attack him personally. Another criterion for judging speech is boasting. Any time someone is trying to make herself look good at the expense of someone else, we need to look underneath. This is a common political tool; if you can discredit your opponent, you do not have to engage the issues. But it is not only politicians and journalists who do this sort of thing. We tend to take on the habits and speech of the leaders we listen to and admire, not only their opinions.
And at a more personal level, we all slant our reportage to reflect our biases. We choose complimentary words when we like someone, and derogatory words when we don’t. A smile becomes a smirk, strength becomes arrogance, honesty becomes insensitivity. My favorite example of this kind of slant is called the irregular conjugation of adjectives: “I am principled, you are stubborn, he is pigheaded.”
So how can you tell for sure what speech is grounded in wisdom that does not “come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish”? [v. 15] Often it’s only by its fruits. As James says,“where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” [v. 16] On the other hand, Jesus said, “I have come not to bring peace but a sword.” [Mt 10:34] I think that only Jesus can be sure enough of his position and teaching to toss that kind of bomb into a crowd. The rest of us need to exercise our certainties with humility and a willingness to listen.
“The wisdom from above is first pure.” There is neither malice, nor name-calling, nor intentional deception.
The second measure is that “God’s wisdom is peaceable, gentle, willing to yield.” That is, the desire should not be to win, but to find a way to live together in both love and integrity. It is the direct opposite of the “cancel culture,” which the Urban Dictionary defines as “A modern internet phenomenon where a person is ejected from influence or fame… by a critical mass of people who are quick to judge and slow to question… commonly caused by an accusation, whether [it] has merit or not.”
The third criterion is that the way we live and speak among our fellows must be “full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” That is, we must learn to see and treat everyone as equally in God’s image, equally worthy of respect and consideration.
When these principles are kept firmly in mind, then “the harvest of righteousness” James promises is ours.
