Tongues have Nothing on Keyboards.

16th Sunday After Pentecost 2015 Tongues have Nothing on Keyboards. James 3:1-12 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 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. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. 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. Who started a nasty rumor about James?  Really, it must have been a doozie because he never got over it. I seriously don't think I can recall any other Biblical author having quite as much of an issue with words and their misuse. Boy, if James was alive today...what he would have to say about how people behave on-line would make the comment about the tongue being "set on fire by hell"  sound tame by comparison. If the tongue is set on fire by hell, then the comments section on any Facebook/YouTube/Instagram/etc must be directly of the devil.    It is true, the comments section on social media has become a constant battleground of no-holds barred verbal warfare.  People say things on the internet that they would never dream of saying in person.  The reason is obvious: anonymity.  These are the things that people say when they know that they can do so without having to fear the repercussions of having to fully own the sentiment attached.  Likewise when attacking someone else the assumption is that the someone else is also an anonymous, faceless non-person. Oddly enough sociologists have noticed that this behavior holds true even when people know they are not actually anonymous. People know that you are not anonymous on Facebook but people still say things they would never say in person because there is a bleed-over of anonymous feeling that he whole of the internet generates.   The problem stems from the fact that in face to face communication our non-verbal communication serves as the trigger for the feelings we call empathy and sympathy.  Without the face to face element our brains cannot process the weight of our own words. Words have enormous power, and always have.  All joking aside, James is right when he targets words as the resting place of a multitude of potential evils.  After all, we are 418 days from the next election.   And the war of unkind words seems imminent.  Our national leaders seem bound to encourage the American populous to vote by scaring the living beejeebers out of us when it comes to their opponent.  While I know no one who likes attack ads it seems every candidate uses them.  It is an extension of the "comments section effect" where our politicians are faceless, anonymous entities at war with one another. But we are real people.  I am real.  You are real.  Sure we may only interact online but we are still actual individuals who have to live our lives here in the real world of other actual individuals.  We must control how we speak... Much has been said, and will be said about "Politically Correct Speech" and to be frank....I am not a fan.  The problem with being "PC" is that it isn't about actually speaking more lovingly, so much as being about obeying an arbitrary (and often contradictory) set of rules. What it means to speak correctly, and keep that flaming hell-tongue under control,  has little to do with proper terminology and everything to do with proper intent. When we speak out of love first and foremost we quell the fire and tame the blaze.  Sometimes speaking out of love means saying uncomfortable, offensive even, things.  Not because of the prurient thrill of annoying someone in a comment section, not to disparage an opponent, but to lovingly improve the life of another person.  The important part is that we begin all our speech with the Love of Christ first and foremost in our hearts.

17th Sunday After