Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Wisdom
We turn now to the second of James’s three big ideas. In multiple chapters he warns against improper use of the tongue. He begins chapter 3 with a paragraph or two of stark words, demonstrating the tongue’s outsized significance in human relations.
To begin with, he says, if you can control your tongue, you can control any other part of your body; disciplined speech is a mark of maturity (Jam 3.2). For “control,” he uses the word “bridle”—and that clearly calls to his mind a whole list of analogies. A tiny bit in a massive horse’s mouth will redirect him (Jam 3.3). Similarly, a relatively small rudder will turn a large ship in whatever direction the captain wishes (Jam 3.4).
Years ago I had an opportunity to spend a Saturday sailing an iceboat on a frozen Lake Cochichuate in Massachusetts. Sailing across the wind, with the single triangular sail pulled in tight, you can go much faster than the wind is blowing—in fact, 50 or 60 mph. It was delightful.
But the rudder. There’s the rub. The little single-passenger boat didn’t weigh very much, and the rudder couldn’t get much of a purchase on the surface of the ice. I was all over that lake. In liquid water, however, it’s different. There, the rudder will turn the whole ship—perhaps not fast, but surely.
In both of these instances—the bit and the rudder—a tiny thing has an outsized effect. And the tongue is such a thing. A few words can change a life, for better or for worse.
James turns to a different metaphor. Fire, he says, can start small but wreak widespread devastation (Jam 3.5-6). Many people don’t know about the largely abandoned town of Centralia, PA, where a fire has been burning for decades in a coal seam beneath the ground. The surface is warm, or even hot, to the touch, and all the real estate is worthless. “How great a matter a little fire kindleth!” (Jam 3.5).
James climaxes his presentation with the last metaphor: poison (Jam 3.8). Just 15 milligrams (half a thousandth of an ounce) of strychnine, I’m told, can kill you in as little as 5 minutes. More recently, the US has become aware that just 2 milligrams of fentanyl is fatal.
And the tongue, James says, is like that.
Yikes.
And yet, James has already told us two chapters earlier that someone who cannot control his tongue has “vain” religion. His profession is empty, vapid, worthless.
A few verses further down in our passage James asserts that mankind has tamed all the fauna there are (Jam 3.7)—to varying degrees, of course. Even a lion is held at bay with a relatively small whip. But the tongue, he says, is beyond taming (Jam 3.8).
So what can we do? Are we hopeless? Is genuine faith, manifesting itself in constructive speech, forever out of reach?
Certainly not. Again, back in chapter 1 James has already laid out the solution. It is God’s word—the fruit of his tongue, if you will—that “begat” us, or gave us spiritual life. It is the “engrafted” word—that which he has implanted within us—that saves our souls (Jam 1.21). And consequently, as hearers who are alive spiritually, we can respond to that word by obeying it (Jam 1.22-25).
So how do we prevent ourselves, and those with whom we interact, from being poisoned by our undisciplined tongues?
We consume the Scripture, in the largest quantities for which we have capacity. We determine what those ancient words require of us in our very different time and place. And we put them into practice.
The Scripture, we know, is a means of grace. It is in itself the source of our power to obey it. It’s time for us to read, listen, and watch God work.
Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash
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