Watch that tongue

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

YES, we have to be watchful with our tongue. It many times can be like a loose cannon, spewing all of kinds of inconsiderate and reckless comments. We have to have a good grip on it because it tends to be simply guided by emotions and passions and to be largely beholden to external factors and conditionings with hardly any consideration to the real score of things. In other words, we can be very tactless!

Christ somehow referred to this when he lamented over the misjudgments of some people of his time: “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at this glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and of sinners.’” (Lk 7,33-34)

This is, of course, a common phenomenon, now getting very serious in some places where the means of communication are well developed but the commentators are not as developed. There is so much bashing, slamming and bullying, fault-finding and inane, frivolous talk.

Especially in the area of politics, a lot of negativity is created and we cannot deny that we now have a thick smog of contaminating views and opinions that are so biased and subjective that even the basic requirement of fact-checking is thrown out of the window. Sometimes, commentators are caught merely inventing things, and they do not seem to mind even if they are caught with their pants down.

Perhaps, it is not so much in our country, thank God, as in other countries, like the more developed ones like the US and Europe where the media is powerful and the people are getting more and more articulate and expressive, albeit very biased, creating a perfect formula for toxic contentiousness.

We really have to be watchful with our tongue. Let’s remember what St. James said about it:

“A small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go, even though the winds are strong. In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches. But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. And among all the parts of the body, the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself.” (3,4-6)

We should be very concerned about disciplining and taming our tongue, putting it strictly at the service of prudent reasoning that is inspired by faith, hope and charity. There is no other way to tame our tongue. Otherwise, it would just be at the mercy of instincts, emotions, passions, biases, and all sorts of conditionings.

With such discipline, we would know when and how to talk and when to keep quiet. We would know that in spite of our unavoidable differences and conflicts, we are all brothers and sisters, children of God, bound to love one another.

We should therefore be very delicate in our speech. This does not take away the forcefulness we would like to have in expressing our views. Forcefulness should not be seen as an excuse for bad manners.

We have to avoid gossiping. If we have to talk about somebody else, we should focus on the positive side rather than on the negative, even if a person has clearly made a mistake, and even a terrible one at that.

We have to be ready always with good and edifying stories, anecdotes and jokes if only to spice up our commentaries. That is why it is always good to make it a habit to collect good stories and anecdotes, and to be always prepared to speak well, avoiding as much as possible speaking off the cuff.

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God and Truthfulness. Once again we need to reiterate this basic truth. We can never be truthful unless we refer things to God. In fact, what would really assure us that we would be fully in the truth despite truth’s many levels, aspects, angles, etc., is when we are with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. There is no other way to be truthful!

This means that we have to be vitally identified with Christ who told Pilate that he came to bear witness to the truth. (cfr. Jn 18,37-38) Only in Christ can we be in the truth. Only when we look, understand and react to things the way Christ did would we be in the truth.

This Christ-inspired truth will always come with charity, because a fact, a piece of information and data presented as truth without charity, is never the truth. Truth and charity are inseparable and interchangeable.

Charity may make truth appear as going against reason, common sense, the evidence of facts and data, but that should be expected. There is a certain madness in charity because charity involves not only natural things, but also spiritual and supernatural realities that can overwhelm our human ways of understanding things.

We just have to adjust our ways of understanding what truth really is and what it would involve. Seeking and finding it, proclaiming, protecting and defending it is the same as seeking, finding, proclaiming, protecting and defending charity which is the very essence of God. It is the same as seeking, finding, proclaiming, protecting and defending God.

This will obviously require a lot of restraint in our relation with truth. And that’s simply because we have the tendency to be overtaken by our emotions and passions, or even by our merely rational operations. While these human faculties are important, they would be out on a limb if they are not inspired by the charity of God.

We have to understand truthfulness not only as the conformity of our mind with reality, but also as the conformity of our mind with the reality that conforms with the mind of God who is the very source of reality. This latter is called the ontological truth which we should try our best to capture.

Of course, capturing this ontological truth would require God’s grace itself. We just cannot get it by our own efforts alone, although we have to exert all our efforts too. That is why to be truthful requires a deep humility and faith, nothing less than denying ourselves and carrying the cross as Christ himself told us, otherwise we would make our own brand of truthfulness that despite its powerful appeal does not hit the mark.

In other words, to be truthful is to have the mind of God who is all too willing to share it with us. God’s mind is revealed to us in Christ who is made present to us now in the Holy Spirit. (cfr. Jn 14,26) To be truthful will always be a matter of our intimate relationship with God. It will always be a religious affair, not just a strictly human affair.

As such, it will always involve some mysteries that can only be appreciated through the power of God’s grace. That’s when we can understand why we would be in the truth when we follow Christ’s teaching about loving the enemy and about the beatitudes where we are considered blessed if we are poor in spirit, hungry, meek, pure in heart, persecuted for the sake of Christ, etc.

To have the mind of God, we have to listen to St. Paul who talked about becoming a spiritual man and not just a carnal man.

“The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord…? But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2,15-16)

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com