The Danger of Tongue

¹Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ² For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. ³ If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. ⁴ Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. ⁵ So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! ⁶ And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. ⁷ For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, ⁸ but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹ With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. ¹⁰ From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. ¹¹ Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? ¹² Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

James 3:1-12

A stern warning is given here by James.  A context is provided by James in relation to the danger of tongue.  In this passage James focuses on being teacher.  There is a solid reason as to why James picks up on teacher in this particular passage.  Unlike our today’s world, teacher that day was a very prominent profession.  And especially within the Jewish community, the title “Rabbi” is not something to mess with.  Rabbi or Teacher was esteemed very highly that the Rabbi could influence the course of life of the people and even the nation.  However, as we have known through our reading of the gospels and Pauline epistles, we could easily find how terrible the rabbis of Jesus’ and Paul’s day.  Jesus spoke against the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law in Matthew 16:5-12 & 23:1-36.  He said: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”  Jesus meant their teachings.  And Paul spoke against the “false teachers” in Galatians 1:6-9; 1 Timothy 1:3-11; 4:1-5; 6:3-10; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 3:1-8 & 12-14; 4:2-5.

The main tool for teaching is speech.  And speech is metaphorically controlled by the tiny part of our body known as tongue.  The usage of tongue in itself carries a potential danger.  For with tongue humans could lie to one another, accuse their fellow humans falsely, and thus cause harm to others.  The case of Jezebel and Naboth was a prime example of how tongue used for deceit caused an innocent’s death.  And the most troubling example was how the religious leaders of Israel used their tongue to condemn Jesus Christ, the sinless man, and Son of God.  Tongue can be even more dangerous, therefore, when combined with prominent position.  In the case of Naboth vineyard, it was the queen’s tongue that did it.  In the case of our Lord Jesus, it was the rabbis’ tongue.  The religious leaders of Israel were the teachers of the people.  They were indeed very influential on the people, which then led to their shouting and demand for Jesus to be crucified before Governor Pilate.

Tongue, James says, is small, yet holds an extremely great danger to destroy life.  Tongue, James says, is like fire.  It can devastate the million acres of forest.  All it needs is a little spark.  Then James moves on to the reality that nobody could tame the tongue.  This is a fact.  We could tame many wild animals.  We could even train tigers and lions to obey us, yet tongue is something else.  In Matthew 15:10-11 & 16-20 Jesus says:

¹⁰ And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

¹⁶ And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷ Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

The problem with the tongue is not the tongue itself, but with the heart of man.  The heart of sinful man is loaded with sins and all kinds of evil.  And the corrupt heart defiles the whole person.  This is what total depravity is all about.

            Speech is one special feature that only humans have as God’s creation under heaven.  No animals possess this special feature.  With it we are like God.  Because through speech we work with words.  And words are amazingly powerful in life.  Let me tell you a secret of heaven and earth.  God created the entire universe with His words.  So we are all composed of words.  In biology, the science of human genome has uncovered that within our DNA there are codes or we may say words, which if written it would be approximately 600,000 pages long.  Those codes are information about us.  A regular book is usually around 200-300 pages long.  In our life it would be extraordinary if we could read 1000 books, which would be around 200,000 pages.  Only a few people in this world could read 3000 books in their lifetime.  But God wrote 600,000 pages long of information in each and every one of us within our DNA.  And God gives us His eternal words, the Scripture, so as to guide us in life.  Our discovery, our knowledge, our experiences, are all communicated with words.  And those words got us think, feel, will, move, and so on.  So, words cannot be underestimated in our life.  It influences us physically and spiritually.  Every human being possesses this capability to bring forth words through speech.  Our tongue is like the rudder in the ship or the bit for horses.  The question is: “What words are vibrated through our tongue as directed by our heart?”

            It is interesting to study how horses are controlled by bit.  The horse’s bit is a metal thing that is put in the horse’s mouth and connected to some kind of rope that goes to the hands of the horse rider.  The bit rests on the horse’s tongue so the horse can arrange it in its mouth as it feels most comfortable.  An expert horse rider said that the most important thing to control the horse is not the bit but the rider.  The bit is just a tool.  But the way the bit is controlled by the rider makes a huge difference.  In the same way, the tongue is only a tool.  We are not born with an evil tongue or a golden tongue.  We are born with a regular tongue.  But the problem is the heart.  The Fall has corrupted the heart of man, which is basically the core.  Thus our whole being is defiled.  If we are to fix the problem of speech, thus of tongue, we must aim at something that controls the tongue.

            I do not need to retell or re-emphasize the danger of tongue for I believe all of you know about it.  Especially if we have experienced its sting.  Once or twice or probably more, we have experienced it ourselves how false words hurt us.  For that part we all know the damage tongue can make.  For we all have been its victim from time to time.  However, we too have tongue on our own.  Thus within us there is this risk of harming others through the usage of our tongue.  This is my main concern today.  Remember the case of Naboth and the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, remember the damage that tongue could do.  Remember also your own experience when you were hurt by others’ use of their tongue.

            One solution is given by James, which is not many should presume to be teachers.  He does not say that none should be teachers.  But he says that not many should be teachers.  This means that teachers are only the select few.  Why?  Because Teaching is a prominent position.  It commands control and power.  It influences the heart and mind of the hearers.  People go to teachers for answers, for wisdom, for help.  Even though the profession has often been confused with schoolteacher who often in many schools teach only the academic matters (particularly only dispensing information and certain trade skills), teaching is still an indispensable human activity that holds so much power.  The next question is: “Who are the select few?”  The answer from the text is obvious, those who can tame their tongue.  What a tall order this is?!  Yes indeed.  But there is a way.  James says in 1:19-22:

¹⁹ Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰ for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. ²¹ Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

²² But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Here, James does not focus only on teachers, but to all who have tongue to bring forth speech.  There are three steps that James prescribes here: 1) quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, 2) put away wickedness and receive God’s word, and 3) practice the word of God.  These three must be done in completion.  We must not select what we like and neglect what we do not like.  But we must do all.

In our first step toward taming the tongue we are to divert attention to the ears.  Quick to hear is the key.  We are generally difficult to listen.  This is an important discipline.  In order to control the tongue, we ought to get ears to help us.  When the ears are ready to help, we can hold our speech.  This is what James means by being slow to speak.  Do not rush with our speech.  Listening is important to gain thorough information.  Before we speak of anything, we must have the complete information.  Ears and tongue must collaborate in such a way that tongue must give way to the ears to take precedence.  Upon listening to the information, we must be patient, thus slow to anger.  Treat the information as data, it can be right, it can be wrong.  But whatever it is we must not take every information personally.  If we take every single information it personally, we will be emotional, and thus it leads to anger.  James says that unholy anger is worthless.  And so, as our ears step into the frontline, our emotional processing must be cooled down to the max.  The heat of the battlefield is always at the frontline.  Knowing that, we march into the frontline with maximum coolness of our emotion.  This is emotional discipline.  Thus, ears, tongue, and emotion work together properly so as not to create damage.

The next step is to clean up our processing station.  With the information rushing in and a lot of emotional stimulations, we ought to tend our processing station, because we are going to process all those information and stimulations.  James says that first of all, we must get rid of wickedness.  Any evil thought or inclination must be thrown away.  Our processing station can’t be corrupted with wickedness.  It must be clean.  And the most important of all is to accept the Word of God.  In other words, James does not suggest other kinds of words.  There are two other words in this world.  The words of man and the words of Satan.  Those two can’t become the standard that fills our processing station.  Only the Word of God that may sit in the control room of our processing station.  When this discipline is done properly, we must proceed to the next step.

The third and final step is to be the doer of God’s word.  One of the greatest sins of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law is that they did not wish to practice the Law that they themselves taught.  This is what Jesus says concerning them in Matthew 23:1-4:

¹ Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, ³ so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

We must not become like them.  The Word of God we must practice.  Jesus says in Matthew 7:24-27:

²⁴ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. ²⁶ And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷ And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

This means that the standard that is already in our processing station cannot remain detached from our behavior.  It must govern our deeds.  The religious leaders in Jerusalem had the standard in their processing station, yet they broke every Law by desiring Jesus’ death.  We must not neglect our behavior.  Alvin Plantinga once said that our behavior may alter our belief and thought.  He said that if we don’t think it would, then consider this: do not pray or read the Bible or have anything to do with Christianity whatsoever for 3 years, at the end of that 3 years do you think you would still be a Christian, believing in the God of the Bible?  James is right in his remark:  ¹⁷ So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.  (James 2:17).

            Now, the last touch of these wonderful three steps that James gives us in taming our tongue and thus not letting it be defiled by the corrupted heart is to look at what Jesus says in Matthew 7:12: “¹²So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”  In practicality, if you do not wish someone gossips about you or talks negatively about you behind your back or accuses you falsely for things that you did not do or speaks harshly to you with evil intent, then you ought not to do those things to other people as well.

            And this, in the 21^st century, extends to the use of social media.  We might not use our tongue physically to gossip about someone etc., but instead using our thumbs to type up words in whatsapp or line or telegram or IG or facebook, but we still harm others through our “tongue.”  Be careful about our “tongue.”  The social media is like a forest.  If you lit a fire there, it will burn the entire forest.  A hoax is not only restricted to major news, but small practical life matters may also be disrupted by a hoax.  To help further with taming our tongue, let me tell you a story about Socrates:

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”

“Hold on a minute”, Socrates replied. “Before telling me anything I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”

“Triple filter?”

“That’s right”, Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

“No,” the man said, “Actually I just heard about it and …”

“All right”, said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”

“No, on the contrary.”

“So”, Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, but you’re not certain it’s true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left: The filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”

“No, not really.”

“Well”, concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”

I sure hope by this time you understand where I am getting at.  More important than getting your tongue in check is getting your heart in check.  Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:11: “¹¹ Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” And in Ephesians 4:29: “²⁹ Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”  I will leave you with that and hope you will truly be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, then accept the Word of God, and finally practice His words in your life.  In that way you shall tame your tongue and use it only for the glory of our God.  Amen!