Words that Wound - A Forest Set Ablaze

It’s curious how words can hurt. When someone tells me something disappointing or painful, I can feel physically sick. A severe verbal blow might make it so my stomach is in knots, my heart twisting and pounding in my chest, or other times so my heartbeat becomes so faint I wonder if I'm alive at all. Nothing more than audible symbology, how can mere sound waves pierce me so?

Yet it’s not the words that cause pain but the belief in them by the speaker and by the listener. If someone were to say to me, “You’re unwanted,” it would not be the words themselves that lodge themselves in my soul, but the belief that the words are true. From a family member, from a friend, from a perfect stranger—words can tear us down and make us question the most fundamental parts of ourselves.

What if I am unwanted? Ostracism—social excommunication—causes us to wonder not just about others but even more about ourselves. With criticism, we can turn in on ourselves, consuming our self-image and sense of self-worth from the inside out with the furious fire of self-rejection.

Many have confessed the childish saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” is the farthest thing from reality, and never have I understood that more than in times of rejection.

Words are powerful messengers of cutting sentiments and wounding stances. My son and his classmates have gone through periods of telling each other, “You’re not my friend anymore.” I have never seen my son more depressed. Even once he and his friend had made up and were “friends again,” he seemed haunted by this idea that he had no friends, that no one wanted to befriend him and there was no one he could trust enough to befriend. “I have no friends,” became his dejected anthem and the cause of many tears. It became the object of many of his parents’ prayers as well.

Lest we mistake this as a problem only for children, we need only to look at political debates of the day. What is it that makes us so angry about each other’s sayings? So what if a stranger on the internet believes I’m hateful and detestable? They’re a stranger. They have no idea who I am or what I am like. Yet a niggling part of me wonders, What if they’re right? Maybe this doesn’t happen to most people. Maybe the majority fight back and debate for the more noble goal of changing another’s mind to the truth. I am not always with this majority. Sometimes I just want someone else to believe me, not to count me an outsider and someone to be hated. Sometimes I just don’t want to be rejected.

The stranger’s words of ostracism and condemnation fire at some quintessential desire within me to be accepted and applauded, and when their words hit their mark, I fight back. How do mere sound waves or pigmentation on a screen pierce me so?

James speaks on this subject of the words we speak, saying, “…the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire” (3:5 ESV). With one comment, we can disassemble a person’s confidence and comfort. With just a few words, we can condemn a person to live outside the scope of our lives, rejecting them and leaving them to find their own way in this cruel world. James says the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God” (3:8b-9). This is not just a worldly problem, a problem of unbelievers—we as believers and followers of Christ also bless and curse with the same tongues, using words to praise and words to spew hate from the same mouth, the same soul.

In my estimation, there are two ways that words can personally hurt—they can cause awareness of guilt, or they can cause shame. It is not that both are wrong. Jesus Himself spoke strong condemnation of the religious leaders of his day. He spoke words of rejection of their misdeeds and misunderstandings of God, yet He offered endless invitations to bring that guilt to Him. He asks each one of us to lay our sin at His feet and accept forgiveness—that is, recognition that we need forgiveness and that He is extending it to us. Using words in this way to bring about a consciousness of sin, if indeed we find ourselves able, is not wrong.

However, we are not Jesus, and we must recognize that as well. Many times, we confuse guilt and shame and try to bring down a veil of condemnation on those who oppose us. We try to “shame” others into submission. This is not what Jesus was doing. Our acceptance of others—of their existence, of their struggles, of their misunderstandings of the truth, and of their shortcomings—should not base itself on whether they can part the thick curtain we have placed between us. We do not love others because they are right (or wrong) about anything.

We love them because they are “made in the likeness of God” (James 3:9). We ought not use our words to reject anyone but to embrace their soul, singing beautiful truth over them as the Spirit leads.

Words are not weapons we use against people but against “the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12 NASB). Yet what words can stand against such enemies? Paul tells us later in the same Ephesians passage our sword is of the Spirit and is the Word of God (6:17). Infusing our speech with the God’s Word, by the Holy Spirit, we cannot help but fight the darkness, evil, and sin. It is only natural that the people of God should speak His words, and His words are powerful! To Isaiah, He said:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth … So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11 NASB)

Many times, I have spoken, only to find my words returned with resentment or hurt or bitterness. I don’t know how to form speech that edifies, that encourages, that builds up, but I have a God who does. With Him, my words will not shame those I love (which must be all people). Should they pierce, they will return to the Lord with the intended result—which I pray is acknowledgement of guilt and turning to Christ for refuge.

My words are not meant to always please. They are meant to bring glory to God. I will sing out His praise and His mercy to everyone, praying to hear my words returned in kind. And when they aren’t—when my words pierce or offend—I plead with God they might be a seed from which the gospel grows in the listener's heart.