The Power of Words: Taming the Tongue and Shaping Our World

[ Background noise ]
>> Good morning.
[ Background noise ]
[ Background noise ]
Dr. Mark Wiebe: So from James Chapter 3, if we put bits into the mouths
of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.
Or look at ships, though they're so large and are driven
by strong winds, yet they're guided by a very small rudder,
wherever the will of the pilot directs.
So also the tongue is a small part,
yet it boasts of great exploits.
How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.
But no one can tame the tongue, a restless evil,
full of deadly poison.
With it we bless the Lord and Father,
and with it we curse people made in the likeness of God.
From the same mouth comes a blessing and a cursing.
My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.
Today, as you all know, we're here
to celebrate Reformation Day.
31 October 1517, the day that Martin Luther maybe,
probably posted on the door of the church
in Wittenberg, Germany, his 95 theses criticizing some
of the corruption and abusive practices
of the Christian leaders in Europe.
To celebrate the occasion, I've got some theses
of my own to share.
First, melons are just water pretending to be fruit.
They're all terrible.
It's true.
Second, Six Flags slash Hurricane Harbor,
aka Wet and Wild, is superior to Disney World.
That might be controversial, that one.
Third thesis, Whataburger, another maybe controversial one,
Whataburger is superior to In-N-Out.
I thought you'd like that one.
Fourth, Jasper Skywalker Weeb is the cutest of all the dogs.
Yeah, thank you.
And then finally, there are two types of people.
There are people who say they love
the 70s Swedish pop phenomenon, ABBA, and there are liars.
(audience laughing)
Everyone loves ABBA.
This was last minute, so I could only come up with five.
Now, I'm not actually gonna say much about Luther.
But I do want to point to what he did
as an example of the power of words.
One of the few things I remember
from my fourth grade classroom is the big banner
that hung over the chalkboard that said,
"Sticks and stones can break my bones,
"but words can never hurt me."
And I remember feeling this conflict deep
in my little fourth grade soul.
Kevin over here will not stop calling me a dweeb.
And he said that my collection of Ninja Turtles
is inferior to his.
That was hurtful.
But this poster over here says that words can never hurt me.
So which is it?
A long time ago, a stoic philosopher named Epictetus
said something kind of similar.
If a person gave away your body to some passerby,
you'd be furious.
Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along
so that they may abuse you,
leaving it disturbed and troubled.
Have you no shame in that?
In other words, other people's words
should never disturb you.
But notice that although these ideas sound the same,
they're very different.
If the first one were true, that words can't hurt us,
then Epictetus wouldn't need to warn us
to try to avoid letting that happen.
The reason he felt the need to say that
is because we're all in a constant battle
to resist letting other people's words affect and shape us.
This is because words are very powerful.
As the ongoing ripple effects of Luther's
posting of the 95 Theses shows,
and as James points out in that passage,
the tongue has like the rudder of a ship,
the power to steer and control and shape
the direction of people's lives.
Think about the following words or phrases for a second.
Checkmate.
Jinx.
Tag, you're it.
I now pronounce you man and wife.
Paisley, you are under arrest.
Logan, I declare you innocent of the charges.
What do all these different words and phrases have in common?
These are all words that have power to do things.
If I don't say the words tag, you're it,
then even if I touch you, you're not it, I'm still it.
When the person performing a wedding
declares that the two are married,
in one sense, they're the same people they were before,
but in another sense, by saying those words,
who and what they are in relation to each other
and everyone else has changed.
Reality has changed.
The truth is that words, not just those words,
but many words are incredibly powerful.
The tongue can set whole forests ablaze, James says.
Isaiah talks about how our words have the power to give life.
And we can see this in another way as well.
How many of you can think of a time,
a specific time during your childhood
when someone said something encouraging or kind to you?
I bet it would be many.
How many can think of a specific time
when someone mocked you or criticized you or demeaned you?
Notice that even though it was so long ago,
those words managed to kind of sink their teeth into us.
They may have continued ringing in your head,
affecting you in ways that you couldn't have imagined.
Words have power.
What's more, the average person alive today
probably encounters within the first couple of hours
of their day, more images and words
from people and companies across the world
than people even a century ago saw in their entire lifetime.
Much of this is not just benign, neutral information.
It's designed to truly inform us,
to sink down into us and shape us,
shape how we think, how we make decisions,
how we buy, what we buy, what we should fear
and care about and fight against.
24 hours a day, seven days a week,
there's a barrage of this stuff pursuing us,
poking, buzzing, alerting, beeping, dinging, pushing
for our attention and agreement.
There are entire new fields, university fields of study
dedicated to learning how to attract attention
and how to attract and tantalize and manipulate
as many people as effectively as possible online
to influence.
One way to get someone's attention
is to somehow force them from the outside
to look at something, right?
Like blinders on a horse.
You can get them to focus their attention on something
even if they don't want to.
But a more effective and powerful way of getting attention
is to create a kind of internal compulsion
to get people to want to pay attention themselves,
make it something they crave.
To do this, you craft a mechanism that repeatedly
but subtly delivers rewards
the more a person pays attention.
And when they're begging to pay attention,
you can get them to pay everything else
that they have to give as well.
Now you don't need to force them to hear
what you have to say
because you've enticed them to listen themselves.
Their heart, their deepest desires, their own identity
and sense of worth and importance will be tied up in it.
You can get them to fear and be enraged at the things
or the people whom you want them to fear or be enraged at.
This approach is also harder for us all to resist.
External coercion and demands are easy to spot
but when we're enticed by something,
it's much harder to fight
because we've come to want it or identify it with ourselves.
So instead of just coming out and demanding in clear words
that they want us to buy this or do that,
they imply over and over again in a thousand ways
that if we buy this or do that or align ourselves with them,
we'll finally be happy and healthy and good and right.
With words and images, they present some people
or some ideas as clearly and obviously righteous and good
and all the alternatives as evil and vicious,
something to be feared.
Present certain views or activities or attitudes
as faithful and others as a kind of betrayal.
One position is rational or intelligent
and mock the other is ridiculous.
This brings me back to James and Luther.
Both the passage in James and also Luther's writings
in the 16th century reveal the great power of words.
And notice this is not just about how our own tongues,
what we say and each of us,
what we say and think, how that shapes our lives,
but how it can affect other people's lives,
how others can affect us because words can do things.
So knowing the power of words, we have to be thoughtful
and aware of what words are in our heads
and coming out of our mouths
or coming out of the mouths of the people
we're giving our attention to.
Am I giving my attention?
I have to ask myself again and again,
am I giving my attention, my ears, my eyes
to words and images that turn my life
toward the love of God and my neighbor
or toward a stronger and stronger love of myself?
My prayer for all of you is that the words
filling your ears and heads and coming out of your mouths
will reflect not hatred and bitterness
and anger and impatience and deception,
but instead the love and joy and peace
and patience and kindness and goodness
and faithfulness and self-control of God's spirit.
Let's give our minds and ourselves over to that.
You're dismissed.
: (applause)