(not so) Tongue Tied

Here's an unusual way for The (not so) Special Mother to start a blog post: with some Bible verses. Check it out.

James, Chapter 3, verses 3-9

If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide their whole bodies. It is the same with ships: even though they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot's inclination wishes. In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions.

Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire. It exists among other members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God. {Emphasis in bold is mine.}

Martin Luther called Saint James the "epistle of straw," but between you and me, I think it's because James upholds so many Catholic beliefs, and we all know how old ML felt about the Catholic Church.

However, this post isn't about the differences between Protestants and Catholics (which are far fewer than you think) or about theology at all, really.

It's about tempers and tongues in general, and mine in particular.

I happen to love the whole book of James. You seldom hear anyone quote him, or read from his letter. In reality, though, he pulls no punches, and I think he pretty much spells Christianity out in black and white. My extremely brief synopsis of James' letter is this--stop telling everyone you're a Christian and start acting like one.

As much as I love reading James, and as much as I sit and nod my head, as much as the Protestant in me wants to jump up and yell "Amen, brother!" I find myself quite the hypocrite.

Do any of you have a temper?

I mean, everyone gets mad sometimes. That's human nature. But I'm talking about a temper. A TEMPER. The kind that takes a whole lot to trigger, but once it is triggered, look out. The kind of temper that explodes and splashes molten rage on whatever poor soul might be in the vicinity. The kind of temper that causes normally nice, kind hearted people--people who would never say hurtful things to anyone, especially someone they loved--to spew forth angry words and actions, consequences be damned.

You know, that kind of temper.

Guess what? Yours truly has that selfsame temper, and it has been a plague my whole life. I had hoped, as a younger person, that when I become older, I would learn to "control" this unpleasant facet of my personality. That it would somehow fade into little more than an unpleasant memory.

Well, it hasn't, and I daresay it has only changed its ugly form. Now it takes much more for me to lose said temper, but when I do, it seems as though I have less control over what I do, and more importantly, what I say, than even I did when I was younger.

I can make excuses about this, but I've had a hell of an examination of conscience over the past couple of weeks, and I think a "temper" is little more than an excuse to behave poorly, and to speak cruelly. Aside from a small percentage of the population who may have some sort of emotional or behavioral disorder, do any of us really "lose control" of our tempers, or do we simply give up control, because it makes us feel better to say all of the ugly things that can flash through our minds in times of upset and stress, and of course, anger.

Chew on that one for a while.

James says our tongues are impossible to bridle, "a restless evil and full of deadly poison." That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Oh, the harm we can inflict with our words, but oh, how easily we allow them to "slip" out. All in the name of anger, and our tempers.

I myself have spewed deadly poison on more than one occasion. And I am no rookie--I know just the words to hurt and cut. When I get mad enough, I can fire with deadly accuracy right into the heart of anyone, even my nearest and dearest. Right now half the country is clamoring for gun control, but sometimes I wonder if we'd all do a little better with some tongue control. God knows I could.

My temper is no excuse. I am a fully functioning human being--I have absolute control over all of my faculties. Why should the tongue be different? What excuse should allow me to say horrible things? Because I got mad? How foolish. How childish. If we can't even control the words the come out of our own mouths (or that we type on the screen), how are we better than even a child? James says we praise God with our tongues, then turn around and curse the very people who are just like us--human beings going through the same struggles as all the other human beings on the planet--and, more importantly, all made in the image and likeness of God.

So the next time I feel a temper tantrum coming on, I'm going to try to do better. I'm going to remind myself of all of my own shortcomings. I'm going to think of the feelings of the person I'm getting ready to blast. Even if it seems like they have no feelings, I'm going to think about the awful, hateful taste those anger-fueled words leave in my own mouth. I'm going to remember that James says our tongues are full of poison, and then I'll realize that our tongues are in our own mouths.

So who is the one really getting poisoned?

Think about it.