Mind your language!

The tongue is like a fire, says James.
(Paralympic flame at London 2012

The good news is that the UK police are setting up a new unit to deal with on-line hate crime by “trolls”. The bad news is that barely a week goes by without some widely-publicised example of extreme trolling in social media. People – often anonymously – post hate-filled messages, or start false rumours, aimed at public figures or others they dislike. Trolling forms a part of bullying in school, college and work-place.

Beyond social media, politicians are famed for their insulting, almost incriminating, gaffes made on the record. Among the most recent was US Republican politician Mike Folk’s tweet that Hilary Clinton should be “hung on the Mall in Washington”. He later denied that it was a death threat, as did presidential hopeful Donald Trump when he told the US gun lobby “they knew what to do” to defeat Clinton. He said he meant “at the polls” but the innuendo was either deliberate or the mark of a thoughtless and very unstatesman-like rabble-rouser.

When arguments become passionate, people frequently resort to ad hominem statements . ‘Ad hominem’ is Latin for ‘against the person’. It accuses someone of hypocrisy or ridicules their opinions, not by countering their argument with facts but by deriding the person.

Combine that with sweeping generalisations and you hear whole groups of people being written off as sub-human. The British MP who called refugees “cockroaches” clearly is unable to imagine what it must be like living in a city where many dwellings are reduced to rubble, food is scarce, services are cut off and civilian hospitals are being bombed or shelled. Would she stay somewhere like that?

Facts don’t come into it. That was noticeably the case during the bad-tempered EU referendum campaign in 2016. Extreme negativism is easy to employ and hard to resist. But often it has the effect only of reinforcing the feel-good factor of the speaker and their supporters. Thus it panders to pride, and excuses us from the more difficult task of engaging creatively and positively with whatever issues are at stake.

It’s a cheap form of rabble rousing that adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge or the growth of human understanding. It clouds the truth rather than unveiling it. It obscures the fact that the uniqueness of the human race is our ability to reason and to empathise, to think and feel our way into other peoples’ points of view. That’s something trolls just don’t get.

As US President Barack Obama explains, ‘It’s easy to make a vote on a complicated piece of legislation look evil and depraved in a thirty-second commercial, it’s very hard to explain the wisdom of that same vote in less than twenty minutes.’¹ That’s a sad commentary on civic and political processes, but not an excuse for verbal abuse.

The hurt caused to victims of verbal abuse and their families is well documented. The pain can be worse and longer-lasting than physical abuse. It can be debilitating and lead to lost confidence. Several people commit suicide every year because of online bullying. People accused of crimes for which there is no evidence have their reputations permanently tarnished, their careers damaged.

Looking on, we like to think that there’s no smoke without fire. More often, though, it’s a case of smoke and mirrors, of often malicious deception or distortion, stemming perhaps from anger, hatred or jealousy, or the perverse desire of someone who feels good by exercising power over someone famous or popular.

Speech is central to discipleship

It’s not a new problem. There’s far more attention paid to the way we speak to and about people in the Bible than we might imagine. In fact, to Jesus and the apostles, it was a central part of Christian discipleship.

Jesus condemned abusive anger, likening it to murder. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca’ [a term of abuse, roughly ‘dumb idiot’], is answerable to the Sanhedrin [in effect, to God, the highest court]. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ [a term of contempt] will be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:21-22).

Jesus highlights the psychological link between anger, hatred and murder. He’s saying that treating someone as contemptible is wrong whether it’s done with words or a weapon. It achieves nothing, except to bolster our inflated sense of superiority and to perpetuate the cycle of hatred.

The Apostle James explains why it’s so serious. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in God’s likeness. My brothers this should not be” (James 3:9-10). The victims of our verbal tirades, like us, are made in God’s image and therefore deserve the same respect as we hope to receive ourselves. They are precious people loved by God despite their imperfections, just as we are.

Paul reinforces the command not to slander people with a positive alternative. “Don’t let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen,” he says – and note that “unwholesome talk” is anything negative, anything not conducive to well-being, rather than merely “bad language”. It grieves the Holy Spirit, he adds, thus hindering the speaker’s relationship with and service for God.

He goes on, “Get rid of bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:29-31). God slanders no-one, so neither should we. God is kind and compassionate towards us, so we have no right to be unkind or inconsiderate to others.

But we still love to set others right and exert our alleged superiority. Martin Laird, a writer on prayer, observes that: ‘The jaws of our convictions lock so tightly around people that we actually think we know what life is like for them, what they really ought to do or think, as though we know their innermost hearts, as though we know only what God knows.’²

That is why praying for people who offend us is likely to be more productive for everyone than slagging them off behind their backs (or to their faces). But before we leave this, note how subtle our verbal sins can be. A study by Cambridge University Press of newspaper articles covering the 2016 Olympics has shown that “women’s personal lives are far more likely to be picked up on than their athletic prowess”³. Freud had a point when he suggested that our words betray our true inner thoughts and interests (echoing Jesus, in fact, if you look at Mark 7:20-23).

So here’s some tips for controlling your tongue which, James says, is like a spark that can set off a forest fire.

• Recognise your “opponent” is human too.
• Don’t react immediately.
• Don’t return like with like.
• Sleep on a response before sending it.
• Don’t re-tweet or ‘like’ a claim about someone: you don’t know it’s true.
• Walk away (literally) from a situation that is getting out of hand.
• Do a Bible study on the uses and abuses of the human tongue (below).

Think and talk

1.  Look at Psalm 5, said by some to be one of at least 20 attributed to David in which his “enemies” are gossips and slanderers rather than military opponents. What form do the attacks take? (vv. 5,6,9,10)? What is his reaction (vv. 1-3, 7-8,11-12)?

2.  What is wrong with slagging people off and why should we avoid it? See  Psalm 15:1-3; Psalm 50:16-21; Colossians 3:8-10; James 3:9-10, 4:11-12.

3.  What is the ultimate source of vitriolic abuse and what should we do about it? Mark 7:20-23; Ephesians 5:1-2, 8-9, 15-21; Colossians 4:5-6.

4.  How should we respond to verbal abuse? Proverbs 15:1; Isaiah 53:7 (cf. Mark 14:61, 15:5, Luke 23:9); Romans 12: 17-21; 1 Corinthians 4:12-13.

References

1.  Barak Obama, The audacity of hope, Canongate Books 2008, p.132.
2.  Martin Laird, Into the silent land, Darton, Longman and Todd 2006, p. 124.
3.  Reported in i 2 August 2016.

This post is based on material from The Judas Trap – why people mess up and how to avoid joining them written by Derek Williams and to be published by Instant Apostle on 21 October 2016 (ISBN 978-1-909728-54-7).

© Derek Williams 2016. Material may be copied for personal and small group purposes with full acknowledgement.