Fruit of the Tongue

What if you strive to compassionately accommodate other people’s needs and live out on a daily basis the Golden Rule in action? As a Christian, you don’t only have a testimony, but you are the living testimony of the Messiah. You breathe, labor, play, eat, slumber, speak an example of “peace in the chaos” love. Then if something goes too far, or you’re maxed out, under pressure, and don’t get the same courtesy; in fact, you’re at the receiving end of rude treatment by loud, aggressive, hotheads (seems like there’s always one in the mix); it only takes one irrational instant, a slip of the tongue once to cause bridges you’ve built with others come crashing down. You can blow up your testimony just like that--poof—gone.
 
I’m not picking on those loud, aggressive, even self-proclaimed hotheads. There’s nothing wrong with that—oh, wait! Yes, there is. That unbridled behavior is always unreasonably unleashed at the expense of another, and to that person it’s belittling, plus it’s unpleasant for everyone. And the self-proclamation is not a hotspur’s badge of honor or excuse to carry on without check. But we can’t control other people’s conduct or reactions to situations, can we? We can only, and oft times should only, gauge our own responses. Sometimes we might deliberate an attempt to calm things down, especially if in leadership positions. Those gifts of discernment and diplomacy can really come in handy! And if we don’t have those gifts, we might ask our Creator for them.
 
There was an incident whereby I witnessed the eruption of an altercation involving many hotheads. It was fun! —(tongue-in-cheek). Fuming individuals went at it in a shouting match. I’m soft-spoken and couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The irony was that the incident everybody took interest in and fought over was mine. It happened to me, involved me, and at the end, it would be my decision what to do. Nobody else had anything to do with it; I think they were just bored that day, opinionated (aren’t we all), wanted to get riled up or something. Because it wasn’t their place to figure out the circumstance. It escalated to a ridiculous level of forgetting what got them from the bowels of the volcano in the first place. In other words, this unasked-for situation heightened needlessly. When I did finally raise my voice to say that I’ll handle things, it’s okay, the group turned on me. I’m not an angry person, but this rare twist made me mad. I had the strongest impulse to tell them all to "bleep" off.
 
I removed myself from the situation and walked away, literally biting my tongue. Shaking my head, too, because as I left, it wasn’t lost on me that they were still hashing out a circumstance regarding me that they could do nothing about anyway. I stewed all night on the episode but tossed my fuming thoughts toward God and had a kvetch session with The Almighty. “What is wrong with people?” I complained to him. “What is wrong with YOUR people!?” I thought about how volatile our testimonies are, and just like that I almost said something I knew I’d regret in the midst of unbelievers who knew me; almost unleashed a curse to those who understood quite well my spiritual stand on things. It didn’t matter what they said or how they said it, as things had already spun out of control in this case. It only mattered how I responded.
 
In my discussion with God, I began to understand the delicate balance between being an example of the “salt of the earth” and slipping up in one instant that causes a testimony to crumble. I’m only sharing this as one case. It’s not like this type of situation hasn’t happened before. We’re human and we have episodes that push us to the limit… unfortunately, over the limit sometimes, and against each other. I have events in my past where I have not held my tongue and I’ve regretted them. In this event, I did everything—not in my power but in God’s—to walk away in a controlled manner that I could cleanly return the day after this altercation more prayed up. And guess what? Everything was great, in fact others were apologetic—not that I was seeking apologies, but I sure appreciated them, and I guess I appreciated their weirdly protective compulsion to concern themselves with my affairs. Anyway, everything was good again, we were all good. Maybe even stronger.
 
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”—Proverbs 18:21
 
“No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be”—James 3:8-10
 
We strive; we slip-up; we strive… It’s daily—a daily renewal. And those situations we regret, well, we can ask for forgiveness (from God and from others), then those regrets we can let go.
  
Micah 17:18-19: “You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”
 
If God throws our iniquities into the depths of the sea, we should too. Each day we have is a brand-new chance to come clean, behave with tact, and if we speak, to speak with spiritual salt (i.e. the fruit of the tongue, sweet and beneficial).
 
In loving others, peace, and tongue-control,
Tessa

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