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Psalm 50:19-20. "You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son."

 

Once we give ourselves a little leeway for gossip, lying, slander, calumny, or any of the other terrible things we can do with our words, we tend to become accustomed to doing it, and we give our speech more and more "free rein" for evil, often without even realizing what we are doing. Our words are incredibly powerful. God's Word is creative, He speaks and things are, and we participate in that creative power in a lesser way as we shape the world by our words. If we are using our words for deceit, slander, gossip, etc., we are shaping the world towards evil; we are sinning and causing tremendous damage to the world, ourselves, and others.

 

I think we tend to forget how powerful our words are, and how much wrong we can accomplish with them. We examine our conscience for bad acts, but can tend to forget about the times we "sat speaking against our brother or sister." That, we have convinced ourselves (with the help of social media), is just the way people are! We need to "vent", or we are "offended" or "triggered" by someone else's thoughts, and therefore feel free to speak evil of them.

 

God goes on to say that when He remains silent while we do these things, we start thinking that He agrees with us - "you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you." (Psalm 50:21). We very much deserve to have this charge laid before us, just go online for a few minutes and you will see evidence of our guilt everywhere! The lack of charity, and willingness to deceive and manipulate, are spilling over into our everyday conversations, as well, contributing in large part to the division, hatred, and anger we see all around us.

 

As I write this, there is a massive power outage in Western Europe. I pray for everyone's safety and appreciate how devastating these outages can be, having been through many myself. When they happen, though, I sometimes think God might be giving us a much-needed forced separation from many of the "near occasions of sin" that are fostering wickedness in our world. Hopefully some will take this occasion to step back from the constant connectedness of our world, and reflect on whether they are using that connectedness for good or evil.