Crafting Words

Crafting Words

The lips of the righteous know what is fitting, but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse. Proverbs 10:32

The righteous know what is fitting because they know three important things: the heart of God, the heart of others, and their own hearts.

"The lips of the righteous know what is fitting" refers to speech. Fitting speech refers to words that are spoken at the right time to the right people in the right circumstances. Someone who handles words this appropriately are artists and craftsmen.

My girls were excited when I arrived at home with a bunk bed kit for their room. But excitement turned to disappointment when several re-cut pieces didn’t fit and pre-drilled holes for the screws didn’t line up. Someone in the factory was careless with their measurements, cutting and drilling.

It is too easy for our speech to be as haphazard and ill-fitting as the pieces of the bunk bed. For the wicked, speech is perverse, meaning it violates moral and societal standards. Perverse means to "turn upside down." It is immoral, offensive, and inappropriate. Children exposed to this kind of speech grow up without any internal apparatus for tuning in to spiritual thoughts or behavior.

But inappropriate speech doesn’t just emanate from those with impure and wicked hearts, nor is it limited to that which is immoral or offensive. Inappropriate speech is that which fails to take into account people’s feelings and situations.

One year after losing their oldest son, friends of ours were asked by a lady at church, "Are you still grieving for him? It’s been a year." She has no idea how she cut the heart of our friends. It wasn’t wickedness that prompted her cruel comment; it was simply an unsympathetic and undiscerning heart. Because she didn’t know the heart of God, the heart of her friends, or even her own heart, she spoke words that tore the spirit.

The heart of God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, loving and faithful (Exodus 34:6). To know his heart is to walk in his kindness, showing compassion to the hurt and suffering. Someone attuned to the heart of God would never so callously dismiss the constant ache felt by grieving parents. God knows the pain of losing a son.

Secondly, to know the heart of another person is to place ourselves in the drama of their lives and feel, as best we can imagine, the joys and hurts they experience. Though our children may be alive and healthy, can we imagine what it would be like to visit our own child in the cancer ward? Can we stretch to think what it must be like to make the funeral arrangements for our son or daughter? Such thoughts are not pleasant, but neither are they morbid if the focus of such thoughts is to enter into another’s suffering and experience life with them.

Finally, to be able to speak words that are fitting, we must know our own hearts. "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"(Jeremiah 17:9). We all have an amazing capacity for thoughts, speech and behavior that is inconsiderate, selfish, and even evil. We can become so absorbed in our own lives that we become blind or insensitive to the circumstances of others. For those of us who have never experienced loss, grieving for a year may seem like sufficient time to calm the ache of a heart. But have we really put ourselves in the place of those parents who still see the empty chair at dinner time?

It takes a craftsman who knows wood to fashion furniture so that the pieces fit and are aesthetically pleasing. Likewise, it takes a craftsman who knows hearts to fashion words so that they fit the setting, offering peace, comfort or even rebuke, as the situation may demand. To become a craftsmen of words, studying hearts, beginning with the heart that yearns to make us righteous: God’s.

Warren Baldwin

Silence in the Face of Danger

SILENCE IN THE FACE OF DANGER

If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, "But we knew nothing about this," does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done? Proverbs 24:10-12

Kitty Genovese was returning home from work in Queens, New York at 3:20 a.m. While walking to the door of her apartment building she noticed a man at the other end of the parking lot, so she turned away. The man came after Kitty and attacked her with a knife. Kitty, age, 28, cried out, "Oh, my God, he stabbed me. Please help me! Please help me!" Her screams woke people up in the surrounding apartments. Lights came on, windows opened, and one man even yelled, "Let that girl alone!"

The assailant left and the windows closed and lights went out. But then the attacker returned and stabbed Kitty again. When she screamed, "I’m dying! I’m dying!" the lights came back on and the assailant left the scene. Kitty managed to make it into her apartment building where she collapsed on the floor at the foot of her stairs. Yet again the assailant returned, and this time he succeeded in killing the young woman.

There were three separate attacks Kitty Genovese over a thirty-five minute period. Scores of neighbors heard her screams and at least thirty actually witnessed one of the attacks. Yet other than one man yelling at the murderer during the first assault, not one witness intervened against the attacker, came to her aid, or even called the police. Only after the third attack were police summoned, and when they arrived Kitty had already died.

"If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back, or defend, those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive your denial?"

In commenting on the evil perpetrated against Kitty Genovese, Cornelius Plantinga says, "To shut one’s eyes to an injustice, to look the other way, to pretend ignorance of evil - to do these things is to connive. We generally think of connivance as a case of active conspiracy, but it needn’t be and often isn’t." (Not the Way it is Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, p.182-84). Abstaining from actively harming others doesn’t mean we are necessarily free from guilt in any injury they receive. We implicate ourselves by our refusal to come to their aid, to defend them and, at the least, to speak out in their behalf.

When asked why they didn’t help the screaming woman below their apartment windows, neighbors of Kitty offered such excuses as they didn’t want to get involved, they were too tired, or they didn’t know why. "Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?"

"Those in a position to help in difficult, dangerous circumstances are tempted to deny reality ... Some people think that any potential danger to self or family frees them from moral obligation to do good. This view, in thought and deed, entails the moral and spiritual collapse of a society. It stands under the judgment of the One who sees through human self-deception and denial of reality." (Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, Proverbs in New Interpreter’s Bible, 5:214)

The man who walks the path of godly righteousness can not content himself with the thought that he has not actively harmed others. Wilfully turning a blind eye to abuse, murder, gossip, slander, character assassination or any other evil perpetrated against innocent people is to connive in their harm as surely as the ones actively engaged in the violence. To seek the righteousness of God means we cry out for justice, rebuke the evil, and offer assistance to the hurt and injured. Doing so may mean we place ourselves in harms way. But it may also mean we will never be more like Jesus than when we do.

Warren Baldwin