Trash Talk: Why Words Are Such a Big Deal

(PART FOUR OF FIVE)

Worry is the interest we pay when we borrow trouble. And if there is anything apparent about Jude in his New Testament Epistle, it’s that Jude is a worried man with a lot to worry about: people “who have crept into your fellowship and speak evil of whatever they don’t understand” (v. 10), people who “walk in the way of Cain” (v. 11), and “filthy dreamers” (v. 8). So, it’s inevitable that we wonder whether Jude also may have borrowed trouble he didn’t need to borrow. After all, what’s it to him whether the people he’s writing to have allowed some oddballs to creep in among them? What are these people guilty of exactly—bigamy? theft? adultery? murder? heresy? perjury? Or is it that they just have bad attitudes? And if that’s all that’s at stake, isn’t Jude being just a little paranoid?

It’s not until we reach verses 14–16 that Jude gets down to an indictment and points out the specific offense he’s so agitated about—and it comes (at least at first) as a real disappointment.

These people are the ones whom Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, wrote about when he said that the Lord would come with myriads [in Jude’s Greek, muriasin, which is the origin of the word myriad] of his saints [or possibly angels, since the word literally means “holy ones”] to declare judgment against all of these people and to rebuke the ungodly for all their ungodly deeds and all the hard-hearted things [the word here is actually sceleron, from which we get our word sclerosis, which literally means something like hardening of the arteries] they have spoken against him. For they are murmurers, querulous, ill-tempered malcontents, arrogant loud-mouths, and flatterers who try to get people to admire them.[1]

The Power of Words

At this point, we want to say: Is that all? Jude is worried—and wants us to get worried—about people who have merely “spoken” what he calls “hard-hearted things” (v. 15), people who are just “loud-mouths,” playing up their own half-baked reputations. For many of us, a good storyteller with a strong voice and loud laugh does a kindness to any dull, overly serious gathering (and in academic life, I attend a lot of these). Some of them may laugh too loudly or complain too much; some of them may think the put-down is an art form; and some of them may just want attention.[2] But are sarcasm and self-congratulation really moral blemishes that need to be ridden down by God and all his angelic cavalry? They’re just words, aren’t they? Not sticks and stones, eh?

I suspect this is precisely what the Christians to whom Jude is writing thought: No, we don’t worry about how people talk; we worry about how they behave. After all, deeds are more important than words. These poor deluded souls are just talking, even if it’s from the pulpit, and we can handle that, can’t we?

Sticks and stones may indeed break your bones—but words and names can actually do far worse. They can puff up and convince those who use them that they have more authority than they really possess.[3] These words can destroy a reputation, blast a career, get a university admission withdrawn, or create a social-media firestorm. And that’s only in terms of social relations. Jesus, drawing the case even wider, said that calling your brother a fool would bring you as close to hellfire as you could get without the real article:

“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the judgment; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the highest judgment; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” (Matt. 5:22)

Words really do have power, and they have power entirely apart from deeds. Remember that God brought the heavens and the earth into being by speaking a word. Remember that the first work God gave Adam was about words: to bestow names on the animals. Remember that when people attempt to use their power to promote themselves, God defeats them by confusing their words (something we see on a large scale in Genesis 11 when God mystifies the speech of the builders of the Tower of Babel, and on a small scale when God demands in Job 38:2 to know “who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?”)

Jesus had a particular objection to a class of words he called “idle” words: “Every idle word which people speak, they will answer for in the judgment” (Matt. 12:36-37). “Idle” in this case means whatever is useless, careless, or purposeless—the conversation Jude associates with “malcontents, arrogant loud-mouths, and flatterers.” Flattery, back-biting, and insinuation really do evil; and what’s worse, they compound that evil by failing to do good. Whatever doesn’t bring forth good fruit is, by Jesus’ reckoning, good for nothing but to be pruned away, stacked up, and burned.

Why do words have this power? Why are the “malcontents, arrogant loud-mouths, and flatterers” so worrisome to Jude?

First, because words are determined by our character and therefore reveal it. No one ever uttered a word that wasn’t a product of their character; even a fool’s gibberish is the real product of a disordered mind. Even words we utter “by accident” can reveal character, which is what we mean when we talk about someone committing a “Freudian slip,” when a word that reveals our real thinking slips into the place of another. This connection between words and character is so much a matter of common sense that even when we blurt something out unintentionally, people respond, “So that’s what you really mean!” One careless word gets dropped, and people naturally assume that that word, rather than our deed, is the revelation of our real intentions.

Words are also important because words not only reveal our character but they also shape it. Habits of speech can be as constructive, or as deadly, as any other habit and perhaps even more so. Wrap your mind around some superficial little sentiment, the words of some silly song, or even a billboard, and soon the mind accustoms itself to these words. They become what we call memes. We absorb them into ourselves and develop a taste for expressions of that sort; and soon enough, we find ourselves in pursuit of what the words signal.

On the other hand, if what we tell ourselves to speak are words of faith, hope, and love, then we end up actually strengthening our Christian character and fortifying ourselves against the great torrent of nonsense flowing out of every radio, television, and website. This is why, for instance, the constant repetition of words of prayer and praise is important, because we are (sometimes without noticing it) confirming our Christian character more and more as we use them. The more we devote ourselves, week by week, to words that are good, perfect, and true, the more we actually come to prefer that which is good, perfect, and true. And so, we begin to understand King David when he said, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, so that I do not sin against you.” The words he memorized were not just words; he internalized them to the point where they actually became a disinfectant against sin.

But words are also important as giveaways. Every major cult that has deformed Christian teachings has also invented a unique vocabulary of its own, as if they felt the impulse to form a new context for what they knew was a new religion. The church becomes a “Kingdom Hall” or a “ward,” and the cross becomes the “torture-stake.”[4] The urge to confect novel theological vocabulary is a way of achieving distinction, but it’s a distinctiveness that warns us that the content is a departure from what Jude earlier calls “the faith which has been delivered to all of you as saints” (v. 4).

Stewarding the Gift of Words

Do words make Jude a worrywart? Is this preoccupation with “murmurers,” “arrogant loud-mouths,” and “flatterers” merely a bad case of hyperattention disorder? I don’t think so. The famous English preacher, Richard Rogers, was once accosted by “a Gentleman” who liked Rogers’s preaching well enough, except that he was “so precise.” Rogers responded, “Oh, sir, I serve a precise God.”[5] What’s true in preaching is just as true in conversation.

If we admit that all of our days are gifts from God and we say with King David, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom,” then it stands to reason that the number of words we utter in those days are also gifts. If what we spend our time doing is talking trash, then that’s less of our limited store of words, in our limited store of days, to apply to wisdom, and in time, we will have to sustain some pretty severe questioning from God about how we wasted those gifts.

The funny thing is that when we come to our money, we behave so very differently. We want every penny accounted for on our bank statements; and if for some reason every penny isn’t, then we’re ready to call down thunder and lightning. Yet money doesn’t have half the power of words. Words have caused revolutions, wars, and reformations. Words have brought consolation, hope, and salvation. The great British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, said, “With words we govern men.”[6] No bank statement ever did that. Why, then, don’t we treat our words as we treat our money?

Jude understands that the best place to head off all the sensational crimes—bigamy, theft, adultery, heresy, murder, perjury—is at the mouth. Talk political violence and what you’ll get isn’t politics but violence; talk heresy and what you’ll get isn’t diverse viewpoints but betrayal; talk adultery and you’ll probably commit it. Jude also understands, though, that if you police your words, then the results will be entirely the opposite. Stop using angry words and you’ll starve out an angry disposition; stop lying and people will start trusting you. Ultimately, the buck stops with our mouths. How we speak sets the climate control for how others around us speak, and the words we tolerate from others set the pattern for the weaker brother and sister to pick up on the old monkey-see-monkey-do principle. Which is why Jude wants to return us next to the concern he articulated at the beginning when he told us to contend for the faith—and take up architecture!

Allen C. Guelzo is senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.