Many years ago I attended a conference of a campus ministry.
The event was several days long encompassing worship, teaching, prayer, and
service. The last night of the conference (which happened to be New Year’s Eve)
was to feature a concert with several nationally-known bands. The venue was
packed with 3000 college students having just experienced a day of teaching and
worship. The headlining band was Switchfoot, who, at the time had just broken
out into the “secular” market with their album The Beautiful Letdown. The
opening act, on the other hand, was a folk artist whose style contrasted
greatly with Switchfoot’s southern California rock stylings. As the folk artist
began her set, many of the attendees made their way toward the exits preferring
to return when the main act arrived.
After the folk artist had finished her performance, the
stage was reset, the drum kits and guitars brought in. Gradually the people,
too, returned, taking their seats in anticipation of Jon Foreman and Co. I had
taken for myself one of the quickly abandoned seats and now sat in the second
row from the front.
The seats filled in around me and I was able to overhear the
conversation of my neighbor. In reality, everybody was able to hear their
comments for they had to shout to be heard over the pre-show playlist. Their
exchange went something to the effect of: “That [folk artist’s name] was
horrible. It was just her and a guitar. Yeah, she just sucked.”
I’ll be honest, I was somewhat ashamed by their comments but
I was even more ashamed when I looked directly ahead of me in the first row and
saw the folk musician sitting in for Switchfoot’s set pretending not to hear
the criticism coming from directly behind
her.
The Biblical author James tells us that our words are “a restless evil and full of deadly poison.
With it [the tongue] we bless the Lord
and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God.
From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things
ought not to be this way.”
We live in an age of citizen journalism and personal
expression unprecedented in all of human history. We all have a platform whether
it is our circle of friends, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And that’s a good
thing. It encourages government accountability. It gives voice to the
voiceless. It allows the disenfranchised and lonely to find a people to
identify with. Truly innumerable good flows from our technological advances.
Yet… yet we often use our voice, our platforms to tear down, to criticize, to
bludgeon our enemies rather than love them
.
Can a fountain send out both fresh and bitter water? James
asks.
Our voices; our platforms give us the opportunity to speak
life and hope into the world and into the lives of our circle of influence. We
must wield well this piercing weapon of our words. Truth and honesty we must
speak, but always they should be tempered with the additives of grace and love.
Let us speak well; speak richly with words that build up; words that bring
life.
Especially with an election approaching…
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