Taming the Tongue - And The Keyboard….
Scripture has much to say about the way in which our speech reveals the heart and character of a person, ‘For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Lk. 6:45). The writer of Proverbs understood the very human tendency for loose and agitated mouths to run away with themselves, impatient to speak and stir up anxiety and conflict everywhere when he said, ‘Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding (Prov. 17:27)’ Finding such self-control was evidently rare, even when this jewel of a saying was first written – an era in which there was no such thing as modern communications, media companies, or social media platforms, just small groups of people talking together. Now, communication is digital, instant, and en masse. Millions of people can eavesdrop and be part of a given conversation.
The temptation in such spaces to constantly assert oneself, taking every passing dog by the ears, is too great for many people to subdue – in part because this abstract world is increasingly equalitarian, in so far as every Tom, Dick and Harry can not only join in, but feel entitled to speak and comment on almost everyone and everything, as though on an equal footing with all and sundry, the great and the good. And so, the indolent and ignorant, the fornicator or the drug addicted, the prideful and conceited, the thief and pervert, all claim the same absolute right to trumpet their opinion in almost any conversation (being part of the digital social public), as the most qualified, experienced, and righteous of men and women.
The older social settings of necessarily in-person - or perhaps incarnated -communication exercised a certain restraint on the speaker; social standing, personal and familial reputation, knowledge and experience, not to mention one's living testimony truly mattered. The proven were generally respected, the wise listened to attentively, and elders honoured. But the new digital public space is the place where the truly virtuous and accomplished can expect a tongue lashing and good kicking from the mob, where pearls do fall before swine, and rebuking a mocker can lead to being the recipient of overt hatred (Prov. 9:8). Things that people would never say to a person’s face in civilized company, they feel free to scream on social media, often behind a veil of digital anonymity.
Yet access to the new public discourse is not enough if you want to shape the conversation. Our intoxicating age demands something more. To be heard and ‘liked’ requires attracting attention to oneself amidst a vast gallery-public that understands a lot less than it pretends to. Unless the crowd is gossiping about you, commenting on you, you may not be heard, and so you must entertain at all costs. And this is the key: the more controversial, aggressive, provocative and sensational, the better for being noticed and to becoming the ‘click bait’ of the moment whilst building your following – typically requiring fervent self-promotion. There need not be truth here, only noise, entertainment and conviction in equal measure. As Soren Kierkegaard once put it:
Our age…demands that the mouth drop open, for how else is one to visualise a true and genuine patriot except he be making speeches, how else should one visualize the dogmatic face of a ‘profound thinker’ except with a mouth able to swallow the whole world. *
Increasingly few people are content to be getting on with doing something useful in the world or for the Kingdom of God, but must always be exercising their tongues, vaunting their opinions, creative ideas, image, brand and ‘brilliance’ before that colossal void ‘the public,’ which appears one day to be everything, but the next may be nothing, having moved on to the newer more sensational or controversial moment. A fear of being abandoned by the digital crowd creates a new form of anxiety, because the person desperate to create their own movement of followers craves engagements, ‘likes,’ and a majority to ‘certify’ if their ideas or activities are any good.
If you want to move anything you must, of course, be rooted and stand firm, but if this firmness is not specifically in Christ and his Word-revelation, but in some other or even adjacent agenda, the would-be movement leader or influencer will not be able to stand alone as an individual – they will need the crowd. Whilst on the surface the desire is to move others with endless engagement and commentary, it becomes very apparent that what the active influencer needs is for others to hold onto them so that they might be able to hold fast, and later brag that it was they who stood upon the brink and at the head of a new direction or social phenomenon.
The temptations and sins on social media are not just apparent among non-believers. In parts of the professing Christian world inhabiting social media platforms, a digital arrogance is frequently manifest in tribalism, sensationalism, contentiousness (controversy for its own sake), boastfulness, and creating a sense of perpetual disgust at the world and others. Yet the abstract digital forum means an almost total lack of accountability in supposedly social spaces for whatever is said, and rarely does it provide a context for meaningful discussion and debate between mutually respectful persons.
Instead, folly is on daily display. Little has changed then since Solomon warned his son, ‘A fool’s mouth is his devastation, and his lips are a trap for his life’ (Prov. 18:7). The tongue is indeed a fire, set ablaze by hell itself, and a tour through social media makes Dante’s Inferno look quite peaceable and pleasant by comparison.
Biblically speaking, we live in a fallen cosmos struggling under sin and rebellion, and yet also being recreated and reconciled to God, in and through Jesus Christ and his Kingdom people. Sadly, some of what we see in Protestantism’s online presence today regards that broken world with a visceral revulsion that can come dangerously close to treating God’s image-bearers themselves as human refuse. One great exponent of God’s law, the Reformed social critic, R. J. Rushdoony, called this living by disgust:
More than a few prominent religious figures who present themselves as bold warriors for the Lord have really only one essential purpose: to keep disgust fresh. They publish…a stream of exposures about the menaces to church and state. Their purpose is to freshen disgust. Beyond that, they have little in the way of a gospel to present, and their morality is often suspect…Take away fresh disgust, and you rob a vast number of people of the most important part of their intellectual, religious and moral diet. With many it becomes their whole life…Similarly, many who have left the modernist churches make it their life to review the horrors of the old church: their gospel is fresh disgust…The Pharisee needs a continual tale of evil, a steady recital of the depravity of men and movements around him in order to feel a moral glow. His self-justification is the sight of fresh evil in others…much historical ‘debunking’ has rested on such shaky moral foundations.*
Part of the appeal of living by disgust in the abstract and unreal world of social media is found, not just in constantly pointing to the failures or faults of other Christians and churches, but in the moral glow felt in publicly defining oneself down to the last doctrinal and socio-political point of contention – to show how different you are from the sinful and deceived people around you – and by engaging in constant historical debunking that refuses to accept the received account of anything, imagining everything is based on lies except one’s own thinking. It is here that alarms bells should ring, for it was the spirit of the Pharisee that prayed:
‘God, I thank you that I’m not like other people, greedy, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Lk. 18:11).
Rushdoony notes that the Pharisee’s claim was essentially to being, ‘the only true believer, the only activist, and the only person “alive to the issues.”’* But the self-aggrandizement and self-righteousness of the Pharisee did not validate his convictions. As Kierkegaard once noted, ‘Not everyone who offers himself as surety for the whole contemporary age proves by such action that he is reliable and can vouch for himself!’ (Humour, 255).
Does any of this mean that lies and evil should not be refuted and exposed? Not at all. Truly Christian people seeking to live by the revealed Word of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit will address evil in the ways that truly count. Not by mere recital or negation, but by quiet, faithful and positive action in every area of life. To endlessly post comment about social, ecclesiastical or cultural evils and lies for the masses to revel in effects no change, even if millions follow and ‘like’ a supercilious tutting that makes them feel better about themselves. The world will not be renewed by social media likes and follows, nor by mere podcasts that express disgust with God’s people and God’s world, whilst decrying the failures and evils of all others with an arrogant and unruly tongue.
You will know if a Christian is truly living by the renewing and creative Word of God if, instead of constantly looking for fresh disgust and running their mouth about it all, they are quietly chaste before marriage, busy being faithful to their spouse when married, conscientious in their vocation, diligently teaching their children, witnessing to the lost, serving the local church, and establishing or supporting godly institutions without making a ‘hue and cry’ about it all on social media.
And this patient model of transformation was the example of the early church. It was by their family life and sexual purity, their obedience to the law of God, their financial integrity and quiet stand against social evils, their self-sacrifice and perseverance in the gospel, their mutual care for God’s people and sense of personal responsibility for others, that they created a new social order in the midst of a decaying one.
We would do well as Christians in our digital age of mass media, where everyone wants the mic, to remember the teaching of the apostle James who warned that not many should presume to be teachers, for those who teach expose themselves to stricter judgment (James 3:1). Instead, we should be ‘quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger’ (James 1:19), just as our God is slow to anger, abounding in tender mercy, not treating us as our sins deserve (Ps. 103:10; 145:8).
Don’t be impressed by your social media following, or those of anyone else – as though they represent real impact for the kingdom of God – nor be concerned to engage everyone in the digital ether spoiling for a fight. In fact, ‘Don’t speak to a fool, for he will despise the insight of your words’ (Prov. 23:9). Have no part in the tactics of mockery and online abuse of other people, most especially of fellow Christians, for the mockers end is clear, ‘the ruthless one will vanish, the scorner will disappear’ (Is. 29:20).
Nothing in our time is more conducive to giving free rein to an unruly tongue than social media platforms. All of us who use them for the limited value they do have, should be ever mindful that, ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness…it is a restless evil full of deadly poison’ (James 3:6, 8). Tame it, or set on fire the entire course of your life.
*Footnotes in order
Thomas C. Oden (ed.) The Humor of Kierkegaard: An Anthology (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004), 246
R. J. Rushdoony, Faith and Action, Vol 3, Church, Family and Christian Living (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2019), 1327-1328
Rushdoony, Faith and Action, 1329
Oden, The Humor of Kierkegaard, 255
