The Rev. Jesse Jackson could probably stand a good visit from Cher right now. She could sing to him and if necessary, spend some time explaining what she meant when she sang If I Could Turn Back Time.
“If I could find a way I’d take back those words that hurt you and you’d stay. I don’t know why I did the things I did. I don’t know why I said the things I said. Pride’s like a knife; it can cut deep inside. Words are like weapons; they wound sometimes.”
Perhaps if Rev. Jackson took those words to heart all the time, he wouldn’t have said that nasty thing he said about Sen. Barack Obama last week, and then he would not have had to apologize – before his statement was even aired – and then, of course, half the country would not be excoriating Rev. Jackson for saying such nasty things in the first place.
When we were children, our parents told us, “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” But we all knew that wasn’t true. The first time anyone said anything nasty about us, we were hurt. And for some, if the words were strong enough and the tone harsh enough, they never left us. Their memory still burns in our hearts. Ask anyone who’s ever been denigrated by an ethnic or racial slur, anyone who has been told she or he is a lesser human being, anyone who has been called “stupid” or “useless.”
Words are weapons.
And we use them all the time.
Sometimes, we get caught using them, as Rev. Jackson did. All too often, we don’t get caught, or no one complains about what we’ve said, which is even worse, but that only serves to twist the knife deeper and make the wound more permanent.
Perhaps because I live part-time in Sudan, a country that has suffered greatly through three civil wars in the last five decades, where genocide continues at this very moment, where tribalism regrettably still reigns, and where hatred runs rampant, I am more attuned to how we use words to hurt and subjugate others all too frequently.
Perhaps living in that land has made me more sensitive to how we speak here in the United States, calling people names and making derogatory remarks about people. I hear this from children and adults alike, in public and in private, from people whom I know are hate-filled and people who I know even more are filled with love, as least in the general sense.
I don’t know why I’m more sensitive now, I only know that I am. And that it is more important than ever for me to not only pay attention to and control what I say, but to pay attention to and control what I think.
I do know this: Whenever we neglect to guard our hearts and minds as well as our tongues, we break the community in which we live, and for which we were created. Whenever we call someone a name, silently or aloud, whenever we denigrate someone as being lesser than ourselves in some way, shape or form, we break God’s love as well. And in doing so, we thus have broken the two Great Commandments, to love God and love our neighbor.
I may not like someone, I may not like what someone has done, but if I am to live in God’s love in God’s community, I have to control my impulses to lash out, and guide my heart and my mind and my mouth to at least try to love God’s beloved children.
Years ago, I lived with my brother and sister-in-law and their children while attending university. Because the children were young, the adults had to guard what we said, not only to protect the children from hearing bad language, but also to keep them from repeating it, usually at the most inopportune times. When it came to driving, all of us adults had the tendency to make, shall we say, less than kind remarks about other drivers. The problem was, the little ones repeated whatever we said, and often asked what certain words meant. So we invented words, one in particular that lasts to this day: “Dingeldoof”, “Dingeldoofen” for the plural. (We lived in Milwaukee; the Germanic culture must have influenced us.) “Dingeldoof,” we decided, was safe. Said in the right one of voice, it conveyed our meaning, our disgust with someone else, quite clearly. And if one of the children repeated it somewhere, we were, we figured, safe.
A decade later, working in Washington, D.C., I was still using this word to convey my, shall we say, dismay with certain people with whom I had to work – not in my office, but throughout my nationwide corporation. I never said it directly to anyone; I always waited until I had hung up the phone. One day, after working in this particular office for years, one of my co-workers, whom I had never heard curse, who had never in my hearing used a “bad” word for someone else in the corporation, in great frustration suddenly shouted, “Dingeldoof!”
At the time, it was funny. Finally, this co-worker had broken down and joined the rest of us crass human beings.
Now, I’m sorry I ever taught that co-worker that word. Because in doing so, I gave my co-worker the ability to denigrate another human being.
Which breaks God’s image of love and community.
We live in times when denigrating others is so common we often fail to even notice it. Somehow, our public discourse has become overloaded with these kinds of remarks; if you’re not with me, you must be somehow lesser than me, which makes me superior, which means I can say nasty things about you.
This has to stop. This does not please God, and is not why we were created.
Perhaps our discourse, public and private, would improve if we would take the time to curb our worst impulses, to do as Paul instructed, looking for whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable. As he wrote, if there is any excellence, anything worthy of praise, we should think of those things, even if it means we have to really work at it.
God would be much happier, don’t you think?
The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church serving in the Diocese of Renk, Sudan. She is a lecturer at the Renk Theological College, teaching Theology, Liturgy and English, and serves as chaplain for the students.
