Words

The Greek poet Euripides once said, "The tongue is mightier than the blade." Two thousand and some years later, playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the now-popular phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword." I know this because I looked it up on Wikipedia, the single greatest website on the Internet right now. Yes, even better than YouTube and MySpace combined. Ha! Take that, self-broadcasting.

I bring these up because for several weeks I've been thinking about words and how we use them. It started when Angie and Katie were sitting in our living room perusing a Facebook forum discussing Barack Obama. At least, it started with Obama. Within just a few posts it turned into a free-for-all war of the words where total strangers decided it would be advantageous to rip each other to shreds. And then spit in the remains. It was chaos. It was destructive. It was not the kind of healthy dialogue I would expect from bright young college students.

Politics is a touchy subject these days. There are Bush-haters and Clinton-haters. Republicans and Democrats (and the occasionally Libertarian). Pro-war, anti-war. Pro-life, pro-choice. Vehement opponents and stubborn adherents to public religious expression. It's a constant usthem pushmepullyou goodvsevil killorbekilled country. A soft but thoughtful word is swallowed by the passionate cries of the offended.

I lament this. I really do. It's not true of everyone, but whenever I turn to television, online forums, even many magazine and newspaper articles, I feel overwhelmed by the disdain and scorn with which people treat each other. And Christians aren't much better. Christians can disparage supporters of abortion and gay rights like they are devils incarnate.

Politics aside - there are those (Christian and not) - who are just plain insensitive, and stubborn about it to boot. I know some guys who have taken to using the word "autistic" when they do something clumsy or thoughtless. As in: Johnny drops a plate, it breaks, and he says, "Gosh, I'm so autistic." When I heard this I thought it was highly insensitive to the challenges faced by families with children who are actually autistic, or any family with a mentally handicapped member for that matter. But do they see this? No. Are they willing to hear someone tell them, "You know, that really is inappropriate"? No. Their answer? "People are oversensitive. They just need to get over it."

Those two phrases are perfect representations of the attitude pervading private and public discourse: unqualified self-justification. In politics, it comes out, "You're wrong, and you must be dumb if you can't see why." In religion, it comes out, "You're wrong, and you must be in darkness if you can't see why." In personal life, it comes out,"I'm okay to say whatever I want to say, whenever, and however. If you take offense, I'm not responsible."

It's something that I'm working on as well. A few days ago I posted an impassioned reponse to a friend's anti-Bush blog. I didn't think through everything I wrote, and the next day (after sleep cleared my thick head) I realized I'd written some things that were potentially very hurtful. Sometimes words hurt because someone needs to endure it to hear the truth; more often, I think, we hurt because we want to win. We want to make sure we get our point across. We want to avoid defeat or rejection. We don't want to acknowledge that we might have done or said wrong, and so make ourselves vulnerable to each other.

Anyone who has driven on the highway should know this firsthand.

My conclusion? Nothing profound. Just to wonder how to get people to first want to take responsibility for their words, then how to actually do it. And how to continue to do it myself.

After all, Jesus said "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). It's something to think about.