Waverly Church of Christ

In Poor Richard’s Almanac, Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.” All of us have done it—said something we did not mean to say without realizing what we had just spoken or how it would be received. Sometimes it is an honest slip of the tongue that simply causes someone to laugh, such as stating that a baby weighed 20 pounds at birth. At other times, an improperly chosen word can cause someone to be offended, become angry, or even drive them away.

We say things in anger that we later regret, in jest that may be funny to us but not necessarily to someone else, in an effort to wound or belittle because we ourselves have been wounded, or in an attempt to correct an error made by another. We say and do so many things with our tongues and the words that come out of our mouths. Here, in his letter to the Jewish Christians “dispersed abroad,” James addresses the exact problem we have with our tongues. As we examine what James has to say, I encourage all of us, myself included, to pay closer attention to the things we say.