Employing wisdom with your words

Our words affect those around us much more than we usually think — But how do our words affect ourselves? The sentiment of our words can come back to haunt us too. 

Lady Astor once said to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband, I should put arsenic in your tea.” Churchill replied, “Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it!” On another occasion, Bessie Braddock, a fellow member of Parliament, said to Churchill, “Sir, you are drunk.” To this, Churchill replied, “Madam, you are ugly. However, in the morning I shall be sober!” 

Now although Churchill should have used more restraint and wisdom in controlling his tongue in these replies, I am sure the ladies wished they could also go back and hold their tongues. 

Solomon’s wisdom today covers both sides in these encounters with Churchill — “Good people enjoy the positive results of their words, but those who are treacherous crave violence. Those who control their tongue will have a long life; a quick retort can ruin everything.” Let’s take a phrase-by-phrase approach to this divine wisdom.

“Good people enjoy the positive results of their words.” The wise know how to speak so their words strengthen, heal and calm others, or to rebuke them appropriately and at the right time — all of which are a source of great blessing to their hearers and to themselves. Another way to put this advice from the King James Version of the Bible is, “A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth.” In other words, we essentially will consume the same sentiments that we speak. Lady Astor and Bessie Braddock found this out all too quickly.

“But those who are treacherous crave violence.” The treacherous, or those who lack integrity, are only looking to inflict harm. They love to cut and wound with their words. They may sometimes try to cover their true motives by saying it was only a joke, but their true intentions were to inflict emotional pain. They find it necessary to cut other people down or to talk badly about them in order to seemingly raise themselves up. Their words betray them. Their own inadequacies and sins go unconfessed and the only way they can appease their own consciences is to verbally put others down.

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