A little Scripture to start the week

Some of the most difficult parts of Scripture are the most obvious parts. I find it extremely easy, in many ways, to parse Scripture; to search for the meaning in those passages that have caused disunity in the body of Christ. I enjoy those passages. I enjoy the challenge of reading the text, studying the words, reading the historical arguments, looking at the context, reading commentaries, looking at parrallel passages, and coming to a conclusion. These are my puzzles, and I excel at solving them.

The text of Scripture, however, oftentimes comes with no puzzle. It comes instead with a very straightforward picture of how we are to live, and who we are to be as believers of Jesus the Messiah. These texts, though easy to study, can oftentimes give me great difficulty because I find them difficult to apply to my life.

The passage that has been giving me fits recently is found in Ecclesiastes 10:12-14. The passage reads (from the NASB) as follows:

"Words from the mouth of a wise man are gracious, while the lips of a fool consume him; the beginning of his talking is folly, and the end of it is wicked madness. Yet the fool multiplies words..."

So this passage has some obvious truths in it. It speaks to the wise, the follower of God, as someone who speaks with grace. This means giving people kind words when even when they don't deserve them. It speaks to the ability of a fool to use his lips to destroy himself (what we might call "digging ourselves a hole.") It also speaks of the pathway a fool typically takes toward evil speech. He doesn't begin by speaking sinfully, but by speaking with folly, silliness, or stupidity. This mediocre base for speech lends itself to a downward spiral that ends in evil speech. If you start your conversations, arguments, etc. with folly, it is very easy for you to go downhill and start speaking sinfully to whomever speaks with you. The last phrase is what I call the "shut up verse." It simply means what it says, that a fool doesn't know how to stop talking.

We can easily preach on the application of this passage. You can come up with several points of practical application for a sermon or lesson:

1. Sometimes it's best to shut up and say nothing, rather than say something that could lead you to sin.
2. We must learn to show people grace, even in the way we speak to them.
3. Acting argumentatively typically will lead to evil speech patterns.
4. If you start your speech in a gray area, it is easy to go downhill from there.

This stuff is easy to teach, it is very hard to apply to my own life. I taught this to a member of the congregation last week. Since then I had a conversation with my wife in which she told me that I was the most argumentative person she knows (argumentative people tend to multiply their words). Do you know how I responded? I argued that I wasn't argumentative.

I really struggle with wanting the last word. The last word in any arguement, especially if the topic is sports, politics, or religion. So today I am going to try to practice what I preach. I shall no longer:

1. Respond to political comments on facebook or other social networks.
2. Every "in the moment" argument I have with someone will be punished by 1 day without accessing internet except for church email.

I hope I can still talk to everyone, because I hope these measures will help me conquer my tongue.

May the peace of Christ dwell in you richly

M