Words are performative deeds. What these words perform is our character.
The letter of James has some wise warnings about teaching and the qualities needed in a good teacher. The Jewish Wisdom background of James becomes obvious when, more than once, he urges the importance of wisdom, maturity and responsibility in the ways we use words.
What we say is who we are. That truth raises questions about what people say online. There is a potent afterlife in words. The good that comes from wise and peaceable words doesn't merely evaporate; lives are challenged or changed by words that forgive and reach out. Words offered as gifts of peace are like seeds sown in hope.
Words that sprout from hate, fear, resentment and a distorted view of others also encapsulate toxins with a long afterlife. Lives are wounded and people's dignity, value and hopefulness are sometimes decisively diminished by hate speech, fear speech, and bitter speech. James' analysis of such bitter envy and toxic words may well offend a culture like our own, slowly but surely getting used to extremes of speech. Rhetorical combat and the weaponizing of words is a serious threat to our human security and our social and political future. Words are made to carry such destructive payloads when we devalue their capacity for reasoned truth, and increase their power in polarizing and dividing, harnessing their energy towards making those who disagree with us our enemies. Such sinister wisdom allied to the will to power is "earthly, unspiritual, demonic".
The rhetoric around questions of immigrants and refugees, the latent and blatant racism of policies and discourse using terms such as "hostile environment" and "zero-tolerance", are alike rhetorical trends that James would describe as "earthly, unspiritual, demonic". Unearthly means a way of speaking by a mind set on lower values, self-interest, material gain. Much contemporary political discourse has "earthly" as its default setting. "Unspiritual" is very similar but pushes the selfishness and ruthlessnes to the next level where questions of ethics, right and the good are lower order values and goals of gain, influence and power become priorities. But it's the word "demonic" that is the most illuminating, and worrying. James is not using the word for effect by exaggeration. He is talking about what happens when hate words take on a life of their own. Envy and unrestrained selfishness are powerful drivers towards power, and once let loose there is "every evil and disorder". Paul uses the same concept of evil hijacking the persuasive power of words to fly beneath the moral radar. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." The older translation captures exactly the menace of intentional malice and unintended consequences in the clash of values between the wisdom from below and the wisdom from above.
Whether on Twitter or at rallies, press conferences or political campaigns, and even in the context of interpersonal relationships, the effect is the same. Denigrating speech -- of whatever variety -- is both a symptom and a contagion for all the social peril we see around us.
Some anxious commentators -- myself among them -- suggest historical parallels between recent rises in nationalism and nationalistic sentiments accompanied by suspicion of minority groups and the dilemmas of immigration, with similar social disruptions in the 1930's in central Europe. Others call appeal to such historical precedents alarmist, insulting, hysterical and naive historical anachronism.
It's interesting that when warning voices were raised in Germany on the election of Hitler and the National Socialist party to power, the same dismissive disclaimers were voiced by many of the most respected voices in the nation. My own advice to those who are so dismissive of historical parallels is to read the history. Wisdom is seldom served by hanging loose to evidence, nor in being over-confident in what we are so sure of. A good starting place is Victoria Barnett's For the Soul of a People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler. It's right there, in the title. Words both form and reveal the soul of a nation. Amongst other things that is why the phrase "create a hostile environment" used in relation to other human beings is so dangerous, foolish and morally indefensible. Does that phrase define the soul of the American people.
The words of James about the risks of being a teacher extend to the risks of everyone who uses words persuasively and powerfully. Words are deeds and have consequences. Words are performative acts which persuade towards change, for good or ill. Words have transformative power as they change minds, harden attitudes, motivate wills and form character. The character of a society is not an abstract thing. When someone says this is not my true character, as an apology for damaging and diminishing words they have spoken or written, they use a disclaimer that lacks evidential credibility.
Likewise in a community, whether church or local neighborhood, the quality of discourse by those in influential positions, is a telling index of character. Of course character is not fixed. People change. And among the most effective instruments of change are words, other words, that challenge our assumptions and open our eyes to new truth. By their power and freedoms, words expose those other false and self-interested words that are more about the speaker's fears, prejudices and unacknowledged desires to have the world only as they wish it to be. Boasting and truth denial are close rhetorical cousins according to James. But so are mercy and peace-loving consideration of others.
When I think of all the German voices that rose against Hitler in the 30s, the one I know best -- the one I've heard clearest in my own life -- has been that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Famous for his involvement, from the earliest days, in what, to German ears, was "treason against the German state", in a very real and vocal criticism of Hitler as Fuhrer. But was is most clear is that his resistance to Hitler was entirely on theological grounds. The claims of the Nazi party and of Hitler and his propagandists Bonhoeffer believed were nothing short of blasphemous, and required of the church the same level of resistance as first generation Christians faced in the face of the totalitarian and religious claims of Caesar. Hitler required nothing less than total allegiance, and the fusion of those political and religious claims were denounced as tantamount to idolatry by the Christians who eventually formed the Confessing Church. The issues were political, but they threatened the theological integrity and spiritual freedom of the entire German people. Hence the title of Barnett's book; the struggle was nothing less than For the Soul of the People.
Victoria Barnett is one of the world's leading authorities on the thought and historical context of Bonhoeffer. Her acccount, which includes interviews with over 50 survivors of the Nazi years, is a carefully considered analysis of what goes so wrong in a nation's cultural and political life that catastrophic and destructive forces are detonated. Out of such research and expertise she worked for decades with the international team of scholars editing The Works of Dietirch Bonhoeffer. Her analysis of 1930's Germany, and of what led a nation to such catastrophic conflicts and subsequent programmatic evils such as Auschwitz, must not be lightly set aside by anyone open to the evidence of those historical realities from which such consequences derive.
When parallels are drawn between the 1930s in Germany, and recent events in our own day, they can too easily be dismissed as exaggerated or even ruled out as invalid. But a reading of Barnett's book is a sobering reality check for those who argue that we have learned the lessons of the past and we are better than those earlier generations who saw their democratic freedoms dissolved by the acids of an ideology founded on making Germany great again.
Her book is also a warning to those who simply dismiss the comparison as ludicrous and an hysterical reaction to a form of politics that has become necessary in order to halt the bogeyman of "liberal progressivism". Barnett demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the strategies and rhetoric of Hitler and his party machine appealed to populist emotions of resentment, neglect, powerlessness and deprivation; and they promised the reversal of the causes of resentment and neglect, and a recovery of power and material prosperity. Sound familiar, in Western democracies today? When there is an upsurge of complaint and claim that the culture is degenerate and needs to be cleansed, and old values recovered, that too is an echo of 1930s Germany.
If we consider the discourse and developments in western liberal democracies in recent years, there are further ominous echoes to be heard and pondered; pervasive and recurring anti-immigrant rhetoric, rising statistics for hate crimes against minorities, demeaning of the judiciary and branding judges the enemies of the people, reversing freedoms and tightening rules by which the poor and vulnerable can be helped and cared for at public expense, finding scapegoats for social ills and "our" failed hopes, turning some media into instruments of state propaganda and seeking to silence opposition and criticism, laying blame for present ills on others than ourselves whether in Brussels, North Africa, Mexico or anywhere else distant and alien enough to be made into a plausible threat. These are not novelties of 21st Century tensions and anxieties. We've been here before, and it wasn't good.
In this book Barnett doesn't make connections from 1930s Germany to our 21st Century times of cultural flux and political ferment. The book is 25 years old. But its analysis remains relevant to situations like the present in which extremes of language, reactionary politics, nationalistic revivals all point to a different and no less dangerous kind of climate change. An environment previously friendly to freedom and trust, liberal thought and progressive thinking, now encounters opposition which challenges the very nature of those freedoms, institutions and structures on which for several generations the world's security ultimately has depended.
Social improvement and cultural correctives are an inescapable part of healthy and responsible human life and society. But when such correctives are driven by fomented discontent and scapegoating of others for any and each social reversal, then echoes from a time and place no longer familiar, need to be identified and named. The relevance of Bonhoeffer for our times may well be in his absolute rejection of all claims to authority and power and public allegiance which are attached to political ideologies and their accompanying mythologies . These are claims to which the church cannot concur, and indeed must resist in the name of the One whose Lordship is cruciform and whose power is life-giving.
So far, what I've had to say about speech crafting character has been left at the socio-political level. But it's just as true at the interpersonal one. I've witnessed it countless times over the years, but most clearly again recently in the past few weeks. Again: What we say reveals who we are. It crafts reality in certain ways. And at the interpersonal level, speech can be healing and life-creating even when its confrontational. If the confrontation doesn't merely aim to confront but to transform (this is Jesus' point in Matthew 18). Speech can be destructive, though, when it becomes the silenced whispers of others who have motives all their own.
This is why James is so insistent: When speech is "first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere", it is the slow work of peacemakers who desire to "sow in peace [and] reap a harvest of righteousness".
Recently, I've seen "friends" destroy friendships when their tongues are loosened for evil ends. These interpersonal destructions are simply micro instances of a macro phenomenon. What we do to one another publicly, in our speech, we're also free to do to one another privately. They make one another possible.
Careful, then, how you talk to one another. It does a lot more than you think it does.
The letter of James has some wise warnings about teaching and the qualities needed in a good teacher. The Jewish Wisdom background of James becomes obvious when, more than once, he urges the importance of wisdom, maturity and responsibility in the ways we use words.
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check ... Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness (James 3).Reading, but especially praying, these words every day would be an interesting exercise in quality control of the inner climate that generates the words we speak and the way we say them. The concept of the speech-act is not a modern (or post-modern) form of rhetorical analysis. James and a whole tradition going back to the book of Proverbs was there long before us. Words are active deeds, performative acts, transformative vocal events. When words are said, things happen. James is interested in what words do, and what they set out to do. The good life of the wise and understanding teacher is self-evident in "deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom". Amongst the many deeds done are words wisely spoken.
What we say is who we are. That truth raises questions about what people say online. There is a potent afterlife in words. The good that comes from wise and peaceable words doesn't merely evaporate; lives are challenged or changed by words that forgive and reach out. Words offered as gifts of peace are like seeds sown in hope.
Words that sprout from hate, fear, resentment and a distorted view of others also encapsulate toxins with a long afterlife. Lives are wounded and people's dignity, value and hopefulness are sometimes decisively diminished by hate speech, fear speech, and bitter speech. James' analysis of such bitter envy and toxic words may well offend a culture like our own, slowly but surely getting used to extremes of speech. Rhetorical combat and the weaponizing of words is a serious threat to our human security and our social and political future. Words are made to carry such destructive payloads when we devalue their capacity for reasoned truth, and increase their power in polarizing and dividing, harnessing their energy towards making those who disagree with us our enemies. Such sinister wisdom allied to the will to power is "earthly, unspiritual, demonic".
The rhetoric around questions of immigrants and refugees, the latent and blatant racism of policies and discourse using terms such as "hostile environment" and "zero-tolerance", are alike rhetorical trends that James would describe as "earthly, unspiritual, demonic". Unearthly means a way of speaking by a mind set on lower values, self-interest, material gain. Much contemporary political discourse has "earthly" as its default setting. "Unspiritual" is very similar but pushes the selfishness and ruthlessnes to the next level where questions of ethics, right and the good are lower order values and goals of gain, influence and power become priorities. But it's the word "demonic" that is the most illuminating, and worrying. James is not using the word for effect by exaggeration. He is talking about what happens when hate words take on a life of their own. Envy and unrestrained selfishness are powerful drivers towards power, and once let loose there is "every evil and disorder". Paul uses the same concept of evil hijacking the persuasive power of words to fly beneath the moral radar. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." The older translation captures exactly the menace of intentional malice and unintended consequences in the clash of values between the wisdom from below and the wisdom from above.
Whether on Twitter or at rallies, press conferences or political campaigns, and even in the context of interpersonal relationships, the effect is the same. Denigrating speech -- of whatever variety -- is both a symptom and a contagion for all the social peril we see around us.
Some anxious commentators -- myself among them -- suggest historical parallels between recent rises in nationalism and nationalistic sentiments accompanied by suspicion of minority groups and the dilemmas of immigration, with similar social disruptions in the 1930's in central Europe. Others call appeal to such historical precedents alarmist, insulting, hysterical and naive historical anachronism.
It's interesting that when warning voices were raised in Germany on the election of Hitler and the National Socialist party to power, the same dismissive disclaimers were voiced by many of the most respected voices in the nation. My own advice to those who are so dismissive of historical parallels is to read the history. Wisdom is seldom served by hanging loose to evidence, nor in being over-confident in what we are so sure of. A good starting place is Victoria Barnett's For the Soul of a People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler. It's right there, in the title. Words both form and reveal the soul of a nation. Amongst other things that is why the phrase "create a hostile environment" used in relation to other human beings is so dangerous, foolish and morally indefensible. Does that phrase define the soul of the American people.
The words of James about the risks of being a teacher extend to the risks of everyone who uses words persuasively and powerfully. Words are deeds and have consequences. Words are performative acts which persuade towards change, for good or ill. Words have transformative power as they change minds, harden attitudes, motivate wills and form character. The character of a society is not an abstract thing. When someone says this is not my true character, as an apology for damaging and diminishing words they have spoken or written, they use a disclaimer that lacks evidential credibility.
Likewise in a community, whether church or local neighborhood, the quality of discourse by those in influential positions, is a telling index of character. Of course character is not fixed. People change. And among the most effective instruments of change are words, other words, that challenge our assumptions and open our eyes to new truth. By their power and freedoms, words expose those other false and self-interested words that are more about the speaker's fears, prejudices and unacknowledged desires to have the world only as they wish it to be. Boasting and truth denial are close rhetorical cousins according to James. But so are mercy and peace-loving consideration of others.
When I think of all the German voices that rose against Hitler in the 30s, the one I know best -- the one I've heard clearest in my own life -- has been that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Famous for his involvement, from the earliest days, in what, to German ears, was "treason against the German state", in a very real and vocal criticism of Hitler as Fuhrer. But was is most clear is that his resistance to Hitler was entirely on theological grounds. The claims of the Nazi party and of Hitler and his propagandists Bonhoeffer believed were nothing short of blasphemous, and required of the church the same level of resistance as first generation Christians faced in the face of the totalitarian and religious claims of Caesar. Hitler required nothing less than total allegiance, and the fusion of those political and religious claims were denounced as tantamount to idolatry by the Christians who eventually formed the Confessing Church. The issues were political, but they threatened the theological integrity and spiritual freedom of the entire German people. Hence the title of Barnett's book; the struggle was nothing less than For the Soul of the People.
Victoria Barnett is one of the world's leading authorities on the thought and historical context of Bonhoeffer. Her acccount, which includes interviews with over 50 survivors of the Nazi years, is a carefully considered analysis of what goes so wrong in a nation's cultural and political life that catastrophic and destructive forces are detonated. Out of such research and expertise she worked for decades with the international team of scholars editing The Works of Dietirch Bonhoeffer. Her analysis of 1930's Germany, and of what led a nation to such catastrophic conflicts and subsequent programmatic evils such as Auschwitz, must not be lightly set aside by anyone open to the evidence of those historical realities from which such consequences derive.
When parallels are drawn between the 1930s in Germany, and recent events in our own day, they can too easily be dismissed as exaggerated or even ruled out as invalid. But a reading of Barnett's book is a sobering reality check for those who argue that we have learned the lessons of the past and we are better than those earlier generations who saw their democratic freedoms dissolved by the acids of an ideology founded on making Germany great again.
Her book is also a warning to those who simply dismiss the comparison as ludicrous and an hysterical reaction to a form of politics that has become necessary in order to halt the bogeyman of "liberal progressivism". Barnett demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the strategies and rhetoric of Hitler and his party machine appealed to populist emotions of resentment, neglect, powerlessness and deprivation; and they promised the reversal of the causes of resentment and neglect, and a recovery of power and material prosperity. Sound familiar, in Western democracies today? When there is an upsurge of complaint and claim that the culture is degenerate and needs to be cleansed, and old values recovered, that too is an echo of 1930s Germany.
If we consider the discourse and developments in western liberal democracies in recent years, there are further ominous echoes to be heard and pondered; pervasive and recurring anti-immigrant rhetoric, rising statistics for hate crimes against minorities, demeaning of the judiciary and branding judges the enemies of the people, reversing freedoms and tightening rules by which the poor and vulnerable can be helped and cared for at public expense, finding scapegoats for social ills and "our" failed hopes, turning some media into instruments of state propaganda and seeking to silence opposition and criticism, laying blame for present ills on others than ourselves whether in Brussels, North Africa, Mexico or anywhere else distant and alien enough to be made into a plausible threat. These are not novelties of 21st Century tensions and anxieties. We've been here before, and it wasn't good.
In this book Barnett doesn't make connections from 1930s Germany to our 21st Century times of cultural flux and political ferment. The book is 25 years old. But its analysis remains relevant to situations like the present in which extremes of language, reactionary politics, nationalistic revivals all point to a different and no less dangerous kind of climate change. An environment previously friendly to freedom and trust, liberal thought and progressive thinking, now encounters opposition which challenges the very nature of those freedoms, institutions and structures on which for several generations the world's security ultimately has depended.
Social improvement and cultural correctives are an inescapable part of healthy and responsible human life and society. But when such correctives are driven by fomented discontent and scapegoating of others for any and each social reversal, then echoes from a time and place no longer familiar, need to be identified and named. The relevance of Bonhoeffer for our times may well be in his absolute rejection of all claims to authority and power and public allegiance which are attached to political ideologies and their accompanying mythologies . These are claims to which the church cannot concur, and indeed must resist in the name of the One whose Lordship is cruciform and whose power is life-giving.
So far, what I've had to say about speech crafting character has been left at the socio-political level. But it's just as true at the interpersonal one. I've witnessed it countless times over the years, but most clearly again recently in the past few weeks. Again: What we say reveals who we are. It crafts reality in certain ways. And at the interpersonal level, speech can be healing and life-creating even when its confrontational. If the confrontation doesn't merely aim to confront but to transform (this is Jesus' point in Matthew 18). Speech can be destructive, though, when it becomes the silenced whispers of others who have motives all their own.
This is why James is so insistent: When speech is "first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere", it is the slow work of peacemakers who desire to "sow in peace [and] reap a harvest of righteousness".
Recently, I've seen "friends" destroy friendships when their tongues are loosened for evil ends. These interpersonal destructions are simply micro instances of a macro phenomenon. What we do to one another publicly, in our speech, we're also free to do to one another privately. They make one another possible.
Careful, then, how you talk to one another. It does a lot more than you think it does.