praise and cursing

I’ve heard some pretty vicious things said over coffee after church. I’ve heard nasty gossip, disgust about rivals, anger toward people on the opposite side of the church building question, and hatred directed at politicians. Oh, that’s not most of what I hear, but I think I hear something mean most Sundays.

Sometimes at work when someone says something horrible, someone else will say, “And you kiss your mother with that mouth?” James challenges us in pretty much the same way in James 3:9-11: “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. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?”

How do I reconcile these dual uses for my mouth, the vile things I say with the same organs that I use to praise God? How do I make sense of the mean-spirited things I post and tweet with my attempts to use those same platforms for these devotional blogs? How do my praises not disgust God?

What Paul wrote is so true: there are two men inside me, the sinful man who wants to indulge my worst instincts, and the saved saint who lives for better things. But in this matter of how I use my voice, there aren’t two options. To mix the metaphor, I can be the fresh-water spring that brings life, or a flood of salt water that kills what it touches.

My choice. But it seems like passing on those chances to say the mean thing is a small price to pay to be able to bring true praise to God.