July 22, 2015
Speak What is Right
On a social media site there are
a couple of local men who, when they get upset, spew all manner of obscenities.
Recently a woman let loose with an explicative and another man,
who is a regular to the site, called her out for being uncouth. Although he went
on to remind all writers they should watch their course language, I think it’s
unfortunate that he didn’t immediately speak out against the men, but rather waited until
he heard foul language from the mouth of a woman. “Listen, for I have worthy
things to say; I open my lips to speak what is right. My mouth
speaks what is true, for my lips detest wickedness” (Pr 8:6-7 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Although the brain appears to be a massive walnut with a few attached gadgets, glands, stems, and such, its actual operation occurs in numerous, separate and distinct centers, each performing specific tasks. For example, across the top of the brain, from ear to ear, wrapping around the edges of a division between its front and back portions is a homunculus, a little man, when the body part interacting with that area is drawn upon each tiny area of the brain. So, to make a longer story shorter, one area of the brain perceives memory, another visual sight, another sounds, another emotions, another makes decisions, such as a determination to speak, another translates perceptions into muscle memories, and finally, two tiny areas of the homunculi (one for each brain hemisphere) control the muscle movements creating speech.
-----OK, so what? Big deal. Actually, yes. It’s a big deal. How real do you wish to be? Your body brings forth your thoughts into reality through your actions and the things you do. Your character is measured in the effects you’ve left upon the world around you. It is like the material world is a clay lump stamped by your seal with every action. You leave tracks all over it for the Great Hunter to follow and note.
-----But your brain is also a part of the physical world. It is also clay being stamped by your decisions. Each thought, idea, feeling, and etch of an emotion effects the structure of a carbon molecule embedded in a neuron cell body. And even these microscopic tracks are giantly apparent to the Great Hunter. Habitual memory casting forth an emotional tendency to string up a line of cursing stamps only that part of the brain which perceives memories. The frontal lobes saying, “No. We will not even initiate those emotional tendencies into their related words,” also stamps the brain (and effects emotional tendencies.) It would be better if the tendency never arose from the brain’s memory banks. But we’re not perfect. They arise. And all along the procedural pathways the tendency either gets stamped into reality until it bears seed in a spoken word capable of sprouting within another person’s frail and faulty brain. It is bad enough that nasty words and feelings leave actual, though private, tracks all around inside our own brains. But when those words and feelings hit the airways, and worse yet, the pages of print, their ill effects begin wriggling their way through other brains. Just thinking about it is enough to renew my effort to stop careless spews of profanity. “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and so passes on? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man.” (Mat 15:17-18) It leaves him all tracked up.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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