No Rotten Word

Photo by Max DeRoin from Pexels

An internet-free zone—that’s where I find myself this morning, enjoying a cup of coffee with the chatter of a friendly cat, warm tropical breezes, and happy bird songs in Haiti. There are plenty of “withdrawal” symptoms: anxiety over the possibility that our La Familia text thread will be blowing up with frantic messages by the time I get back to Wi-Fi; dread over the sheer number of email messages and student posts that will have accumulated, accusing me with their silent demand for a response; disappointment that I can’t continue my streaks in Duolingo and Wordle. But along with that first-world bundle of anxieties, there is also a sense of relief—relief at the stillness, the silencing of the mad cacophony of voices that pour out of social media and news networks.

There are a lot of jarring notes in the raucous clamor that passes for “communication” in cyber-land, but one repetitive motif that has become increasingly discordant and troubling is what we might call “Christian name calling.” You know what I’m talking about—followers of Jesus who feel free to slap ugly, derogatory labels on other followers of Jesus when they don’t match up with them item by item in a checklist of political, ideological, or doctrinal matters. Shouts of condemnation, sneers and scorn, vicious attacks on character, unresearched and unverified charges of heresy and heinous behavior, all expressed in language that is ugly at best and vile at worst—this is what fills up our news feeds. These verbal bombs are launched with equal vigor from the left and the right, from inside each extreme’s fortress of certainty and self-righteousness. And even many followers of Jesus who are out on the plain, somewhere between the walled towers of right and left, seem to have been infected with this destructive and highly contagious communicative virus, and so we are tempted to pick up unexploded ordnance and give it another lob towards its target. For those of us who are “the people called Methodists,” many of whom are experiencing less than amicable separation, the enemy is gleefully poised for every opportunity to use this particular strategy among us. We must resist!

Perhaps “Christian name-calling” is much too gentle a label for this practice, much too easily shrugged off or excused as merely childish misbehavior. If we take seriously the prophetic and apostolic voices in Scripture, we may be forced to look at this phenomenon in a sharper, more disquieting light. Hear Paul’s charge to the Ephesians as he instructs them on what it looks like to live as new creation people in the context of Christian community: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (4:29, NIV). In his commentary on this verse, Clinton Arnold notes the unusual Greek word that the NIV translates mildly as “unwholesome.” It actually connotes something filthy or rotten. Arnold’s pithy suggestion about the use of this word is that Paul “wants believers to develop a kind of ‘gag reflex’ to unhealthy ways of talking that will repulse them and cause them to clean up the way they speak to each other” (Ephesians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 305). Words that build up and words that tear down cannot coexist; grace-giving speech and vilifying speech are not compatible. 

Paul immediately adds: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you (y’all, plural) were marked with a seal for the day of redemption” (4:30, NRSV). The way we talk to and about each other within the body of Christ has the potential to grieve the Holy Spirit, especially if our communication looks and sounds like the things that Paul instructs the Ephesians to put off: “all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” (4:31). That should give us great pause as we consider the things we say and tweet and share. What should characterize our communication with and about other followers of Jesus, according to Paul? “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (4:32–5:2).

What is the antidote that can move us from the dreadful, Spirit-grieving reality of Ephesians 4:31 into the Jesus-shaped life that Paul describes in the following verses? As in any transformation of the heart, it begins with and is made possible by the gracious work of God through the sanctifying Spirit; but that process of sanctification also requires our active cooperation, as indicated by Paul’s use of imperatives (“do this,” “don’t do that”) throughout that section of the letter. Our willingness to submit to that process of transformation in regard to our communication choices may require a prior change—a change of perspective on our brothers and sisters in Christ. This was brought home to me in a vivid way during Holy Week this year.

On Holy Thursday, the men of our church and a couple invited guests reenacted the Last Supper. They presented a tableaux that recreated DaVinci’s famous painting of that scene, in the very instant when each man was asking himself the painful question, “Is it I who will betray Jesus?” One by one, the disciples stepped out of their frozen-in-place roles, animated by the opportunity to tell the story of their life-changing encounter with Jesus and the unsettling self-doubt that plagued them in that moment. As each one recounted his experience, I was struck by the heterogeneity of this group: Jesus called his followers from across the ideological, political, and religious spectrum of the day. His company of friends included at least one Zealot, a fierce proponent of armed revolution against Rome; he called a tax collector, a hated collaborator with the imperial government; he invited “hillbilly” fishermen from rural Galilee; he even chose at least one non-Galilean, an outsider, to be in the group (Judas Iscariot). And if we look beyond the Twelve, the diversity of Jesus’ followers is even more evident—he received women who were boldly willing to break cultural norms to follow and serve him (Luke 8:1–3), learning from him in the posture of disciples (Luke 10:39); even a Pharisee or two came late to the group (Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea).

As I pondered the diversity of this group of men and women in the days after Holy Week, one of the things that struck me is the way Jesus himself interacted with his strange mix of followers and how he modeled the ways that they were to interact with each other. Jesus was never one to beat about the bush or hide his point inside politically correct or timid language. As we say in Spanish, Jesús no tenía pelos en la lengua—literally, he “had no hair on his tongue,” meaning his speech was frank, direct, and unvarnished. This was true not just with his opponents (remember the famous “brood of vipers” categorization of the Pharisees in Matthew 12:34?), but even with his disciples. In Mark 8, for example, he questions rather harshly their persistent inability to see and understand what God is doing (vv. 17–21) and rebukes Peter in no uncertain terms for allowing Satan’s purposes to shape his thinking (v. 33). And yet, totally missing from Jesus’ words to his disciples, even in his sharpest rebukes, are vitriol, condemnation, mocking, and scorn—the very things that seem to characterize much Christian communication on social media. He modeled for them, in the midst of their heterogeneity, what it looks like to use words to build up rather than tear down, even in moments when there is a genuine need for rebuke. Missing from Jesus’ frank interchanges with his followers was wrath, anger, bitterness, and slander. And on one occasion when some of his followers begged to be allowed to “call down fire from heaven” against a resistant village, Jesus reprimanded them (Luke 9:54–55). It seems that even in our speech about non-believers, building up should be the norm, not tearing down; how much more, then, when we talk about fellow believers.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ long talk with his disciples on Holy Thursday and the prayer that follows are built upon two intertwined foundational elements: love and unity (oneness). Try listening to John 13–17 on a Bible app; you’ll be struck with the persistent presence of these two things, like a rhythmic cadence, in the challenge Jesus gives to his followers. Jesus insists that those who have chosen to follow him are one, united in their differences by their central loyalty to him. Galilean or Judean, fisherman or tax collector, male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free, progressive or conservative—those who are “in Christ,” to use Paul’s phrase, are one, no matter their diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Out of that unity flows the overarching imperative of the speech: love one another. Love holds no space for ugly, unwholesome speech. So when Jesus lays out the startling communicative effect of that love (“by this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” Jn 13:35), surely the quality of our “one another” speech is built into our witness to the world.

That assessment by Jesus—that the world will know that we belong to him because of the way we love one another—should give us pause every time we open our mouths or set fingers to keyboard. Is there room in the great diversity of the body of Christ for passionate disagreement on non-essentials, for vigorous debate of current issues? Absolutely! (Although social media is probably not the most apt platform for such debate.) But there is no room for attack, condemnation, malicious speech, slander, and anger-driven vitriol against other believers. Let us make no mistake—the world is watching, listening, and reading as we interact with each other and talk about each other. Will it see and hear just a reflection of itself, cloaked in Christian-ese but indistinguishable in spirit and in effect? Or will it hear and see an entirely different kind of communication, the interchange of ideas between people who are bound in unity and love, even in their fiercest disagreements?

Dr. Rachel Coleman lives in Elida, Ohio. She is an adjunct instructor and course writer (Biblical Studies) for Indiana Wesleyan University, Bethel University, Asbury Theological Seminary, and United Theological Seminary, and serves as a regional theological education consultant (Latin America) for One Mission Society. Rachel blogs at writepraylove660813036.wordpress.com.