The Power of Words

I don't think you should feel too guilty about the cursing. But I understand why you might feel that way. Sometimes I wonder if the desire to curse isn't really more a desire to simply give voice to something explosive ... and the words used aren't really the issue. I wonder if we're just conditioned to view certain words as being useful in those situations. I wonder if under different conditioning we might just as easily use other words -- "Oh, basketball!" or "What the vacuum cleaner!?" We'll never know ... we're conditioned the way we're conditioned.

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I've been reading the book "The Divine Conspiracy," and in it Dallas Willard has been giving an exposition on the Sermon on the Mount. His reading of the Beatitudes is like nothing I've ever seen: the "blessed" statements are meant to convey that the "Kingdom of God" is available to those classes of people who at the time were felt to not be elibible -- the poor, the meek ... in other words, all those not in the ruling religious elite.

That's an interesting approach. But I'm not sure it holds up for the "Blessed are the peacemakers" and "Blessed are those who thirst after righteousness" passages. Willard's argument is that true peacemakers are often shunned, because they refuse to take sides in a dispute. The "thirst after righteousness" one stumps me ... I would have thought that was the very definition of "Pharisee." Perhaps Willard was reading that as non-Pharisees who thirsted after true righteousness, not just external manifestation. I'm not sure.

In any event, later he was expounding on the "Judge not" passage. Here his reading was aligned with what I've heard/read elsewhere. The point is not that we are to suspend our faculties for discernment, but rather that we are not to be harsh, critical, and condemning. Now this makes some sense ... and I must confess that I have a real inclination to be harsh, critical and condemning. Certain in my heart, and too often by way of my tongue.

So I'm trying something -- I'm trying to not give voice to the condemning thoughts that spring up in my heart. There's little I can do at the moment about the thoughts that pop up in my mind ... but forming the words with my mouth is an act of conscious will. Perhaps by exercising this small thing, I can slowly start to make myself more receptive to the Lord's promptings to change at an even deeper level.

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Hurricane Rita is barreling down on the Texas/Louisiana coast. May the damage and suffering be minimal.