Trash Talk

Trash Talk

If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. James 1:26

Trash talk has been accepted in sports culture as “part of the game,” but there’s no such thing as trash talk in God’s view. You are responsible for everything you say, and what you say goes a long way in defining who you are. A certain coach disagrees with me on this and says, “You judge me unfairly when you make a determination about me as a person by my words.” We’ll just have to agree to disagree, I guess.

For the rest of us, this verse should hit home. Any stray word or comment can undermine our witness for Christ to people who hear what we say firsthand or who hear it at a later time. It is especially true in this age of electronic communication with the ability anyone has to record the audio or video of a moment and instantly send it around the world using a number of social networking media. Even if they don’t right away, it’s often saved for perpetuity.

Too often we casually think in terms of “walking the talk,” which is important. But even more important, we should be modeling through what we say. We have to be careful about speaking rashly, about using words that aren’t clearly thought out. But the bigger issue is why we are saying those words at all. Could it be that it is coming from what is within and that we have just been doing a good job of hiding that from the world? Why is it coming out now?

Speak with measured words. That admonition is not necessarily embraced in the middle of a football field on game day. We fans, players, and media defend “trash talk” as part of the game, helping get everyone “psyched up” to play. The reality is that it points out to everyone else what is inside us. And anyone who looks to those players who are “trash talkers” as role models is being led down a wrong path.

Your witness is demonstrated in many ways, by what you do for others and in the way you live your life, but it is also by the words that come out of your mouth. Make those words a witness worthy of the one whose story you are telling.

Uncommon Key > Plain and simple—what people hear you say will tell them, accurately or not, a lot about who you are. Make sure there is no question in their minds.