I’m not typically a person who enjoys catchphrases and click-bait. I usually end up disappointed by the results of my clicking. Worse, I will try a catchphrase for a while, but consistently give it up after a few weeks.
Same thing for slang words. I’ll use contractions when I speak and write, but do my best to avoid substituting slang for more beautiful words in the language of my forefathers.
I always love listening to the beauty of words spoke in old movies or regency films. Give me a cultured British accent over the street-speak of my kid’s generation. Clueless – the movie loosely, and I do mean loosely, based on Jane Austen’s Emma – did none of us 90s kids any good with their “hip and cool” slang terms for EVERYTHING. I exaggerate, but only a little bit.
Language is such a beautiful tool, but it can also be a destructive one. It communicates beauty, love, life, and laughter and it can also speak darkness, vulgarity, sorrow, and death.
Sometimes, it’s so thoughtless and easy to slip into vulgarity and rash, impulsivity of the tongue. Perfect example being yesterday when one of my children left a toy – a nice, hard, large toy – in the hallway. I had the baby in my arms and didn’t see it turning the corner to get to the kitchen. It was a practice sword and the point hit dead center on my middle toe on the left foot. Broke open the skin but fortunately did not break the bone. I tripped and managed to catch myself so I didn’t topple onto the baby, but it was not as easy to catch my tongue.
I grew up ultra-conservative. We didn’t even say words like shut up or crap. I went through a period after I married where I decided I was going to not care so much about “slips of the tongue” and I will say with all honesty – and a whole lot of regret – that it is not easy to come back from that decision.
I was grateful none of the kids – save the baby, poor dear – were in hearing distance, but my youngest child and poor husband got an earful. In my defense, the pain was agonizing. I would rather be back in the delivery room pushing a baby out than experience what happened to all the nerves in my foot over that toy sword.
I cried then, after swearing like a sailor. In the interest of full disclosure, I cannot honestly claim the tears helped more than swearing in that moment. Both were cathartic, in their own way.
And that is the draw of words. It would have sounded entirely odd if I had screamed out, “Alas, and alack, for my poor wounded extremity. I am sore and suffering and my nerves are all afire. Woulds’t that my blessed children had only picked up their hard plastic weapon and placed it in its rightful location. I weep and I bleed for my calamity.”
Yet those aforementioned words have a beauty – exaggerated, I grant you – and an clarity to describe my suffering and pain in a way that the blue streak I cursed did not. I am not saying I would or should have been quite so dramatic, but the fact that I fell so easily into vulgar word vomit is a source of consternation for me for multiple reasons.
In the first, it is a poor indicator of my intelligence if all I can come up with are curses, even in the midst of pain.
In the second, and probably more important, I am concerned that I am teaching my children – even the absent ones for they have heard my sorry tongue on other occasions – the wrong use of words. Instead of breathing and speaking life, I am speaking death and destruction.
You may say, “Sarah, you are being far to hard on yourself and must offer grace especially for a situation in which you were not prepared and which pained you.”
You may say, “I cannot believe you call yourself a Christian with the mouth you have. Shame.”
You may say something in between both of those and that’s fine too.
Believe me, I find motherhood the worst contradiction and tension of opposites in my entire life. For I fully feel both of those things – shame and a desire to do better as well as the admonishment that I should forgive myself and give grace.
Context matters.
It’s not just when you speak but how and to whom, what and where and why.
I can say something completely truthful about a loved one or a situation or circumstance, a current event or a past mistake and it truly matters how, when, why, what, where, and to whom it is communicated.
I will gladly debate and discuss politics and the Public Assembly – better known as Ekklesia – that should and must play a role in those politics. I will speak of it to anyone willing to bring it to the table. I just won’t bring it up at a highly charged dinner party where I know several family members will explode if just the wrong opinion is spoken.
Speaking the Truth, IS speaking life, though that is not the end of the conversation. How, when, where, why, and to whom one speaks Truth plays just as much importance in whether it is life-giving or life-taking. I will NOT lie to make someone feel good. And I will be very careful with how the Truth is communicated depending on the circumstances and the person involved.
In one situation, I may subtly draw on the Truth by asking questions and not pushing hard and fast answers.
In another, I may have to push the Truth across hard and fast.
One is a seeker or maybe even a person who is ignorant of or opposed to the Truth.
The other is my toddler getting ready to run across the road in the oncoming path of a large truck.
Words are beautiful and language is an amazing tool of presenting ideas, learning new concepts, and teaching, speaking, writing life into the lives of those around you.
Every good and beautiful thing comes from God, and every good and beautiful thing can be twisted and used for evil.
Which do we choose?
Life?
Death?
The blessing?
or the cursing?