Reading the Book of Proverbs as I’ve been doing, I have been once again struck by just how many verses there are that deal with matters of the mouth.  Some 60+ verses refer to the “mouth” or to “the lips”, the general depiction being that of a fool’s lips/mouth being loose and getting him into trouble, and those of a wise man being restrained and helping him avoid it.  Jesus Himself said, “…out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. … I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  By your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned.”  (Mt. 12:34b,ff)  Paul directs several passages toward what is or is not proper speech for the believer.  Wordsmith and chatterbox than I am, few verses in Scripture are as sobering to me as Pr. 10:19 “When words are many, transgression is not lacking…”

Hitching this train of thought to the cars from the previous entry on being bigger than our feelings, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about just how much what we say, and how we say it, contributes to the mental/emotional landscape we create.  We set ourselves up, in effect, for good or ill.  And not only ourselves!  There is a psychological phenomena called “emotional contagion”.  Just like it sounds, it refers to the tendency we have to pick up emotional moods from others.  We all know the ‘joke’ about the boss chewing out the salesman, who chews out his wife, who yells at the son, who then kicks the dog.  One insurance company is currently running a commercial the other way; Person A observes someone else doing something kind, so Person A then does something kind for Person B, who then does something kind for Person C, and so on.

One of my own worst problems has to do with talking about things that upset me.  Anyone in customer service will tell you that we are several times more likely to tell others about it if we have a bad experience than if we have a good one.   We are more likely to remember the “jerk” who cut us off on the freeway than we are to note the sweetie who let us merge into the crowded street.  Days, months, even years after some incidences, we still regale in vivid detail the stupidity, idiocy, or thoughtlessness of others.  Pr. 12:16 says, “A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult” and Proverbs 19:11 says “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is his glory to overlook an offense.”  To overlook means “to ignore deliberately or indulgently”.  Even if we miss the chance to overlook an irritant at the time it happens, we still have the choice of choosing to “overlook” it later by refusing to rehash it.  In repeating a story about something that upset us, we often feel those same emotions and feed them to greater heights, rather than diminishing or eliminating them.  If it’s something we could choose to overlook, then we need to quell the compulsion to retell the upsetting, and instead choose to tell the uplifting, which will not only improve our own frame of mind but give others something more positive to “catch” from us.

Phil 2:14ff reads this way in the Phillips translation “Do all you have to do without grumbling and complaining, so that you may be blameless and harmless, faultless children of God living in a warped and diseased age, and shining like lights in a dark world.”  Yet even among Christians, there are those for whom complaining about our boss, our work schedule, our kids, our finances, our churches is a common  past-time.  We seem driven to convince others of just how bad we have it.  Sometimes we even use the opportunity of ‘asking for prayer’ as simply another venue to air our complaint!  We may justify to ourselves that we need to “vent”, but all too often that is simply an excuse for trying to find attendees for our pity party, or getting others to validate our anger and feelings of put-upon-ness, or getting others to take up an offence on our behalf.  Unless our “venting” is being done as a true seeking for wise counsel on how to respond to a situation in a godly fashion – with a full intent to follow that counsel! – we’re better off sharing the frustration with the Lord only, and finding something more positive to talk about with others.

Over and over again in Scripture, we are enjoined to be careful of how we talk.  While it is true that “from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks’ (Mt. 12:34), it is also true that what we say and how we act influences what is in our heart.  If we ACT the way we want to feel, we are likely to end up feeling more of the way we are acting.  It’s not about pretending when we don’t WANT to be different; that won’t work.  It’s about choosing to act the way we want to be, and our feelings following in line with our will.  If we set our lips to give thanks for God’s blessings, to speak words of encouragement, to tell of the good things going on in our lives, to remember God’s mercy and rejoice in His unfailing love, because we WANT to be someone whose words are known for being the kind that “build others up”, it will be difficult for our heart not to follow – and that will give us more good words, which will lift our hearts, and so on.

Since we’re all “contagious”, let’s be sure it’s for good!