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Unwholesome Words

             Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Ephesians 4:29)

          When I was a kid, my mother informed me that saying, “Geez” was really saying, “Jesus.” Darn was damn. Shoot was shit. I don’t recall any others that she pointed out, but if I wasn’t going to use the bad expletives, I shouldn’t use the not-so-bad ones. If we’re being honest, if we use our expletives in the place of the bad expletives all the time and think we’re being wholesome. At least until we get angry or frightened. How many of us think “OMG” is OK?

          What words you use or don’t use is up to you, but bad language isn’t the only unwholesome stuff that comes out of our mouths. Other obvious bits of unwholesomeness are lies, gossip, a fair percentage of our humor, and the celebration of the suffering of others, which is a type of slander. After all, how often are your words or your celebrations entirely private? For that matter, how much of our self-talk (the things we say to ourselves) or the things we say about ourselves to others wholesome?

          When I was in Toastmasters, one piece of advice often repeated was to not say “Um, Uh, Eh, or Ah.” We fill in between words and phrases with these noises that have no meaning. “You know” is another example. I once got so tired of a professor using that phrase that I started counting the uses instead of following the content of his lecture. He used it 30 times in 15 minutes, and once, there was nothing between: “you know, you know.”

          Our use of unwholesome speech is equally unconscious. I don’t recall what the bad word was, but someone said one that happened to be at least potentially in a verb format. I said, “Do I have to? Right here? Right now? In public?” I got a blank stare until they thought back to what they’d said, and then they were irritated. Looking back, I’ll grant that my comment wasn’t likely to have built them up according to their needs.

          The challenge of today’s verse is for us to pay attention to what we say. It’s not easy, but if we take it to God, He’s likely to reveal a few issues to us.

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