Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell (1928)
“I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle.” Psalm 39:1
The first verses of the thirty-ninth Psalm were no doubt very familiar to the apostle James, and it is very likely that he had them in mind when he wrote his classic passage on the tongue in his Epistle (James, chapter 3). Psalmist and apostle knew whereof they wrote when they spoke of the tongue as an instrument of evil. Through it the unruly passions of our hearts are turned loose in the world. Like a poisoned dagger, it stabs the reputation and happiness of others. Like a firebrand, it sets our minds on fire with hates and contentions. It sows discord and reviling and bitterness among men. No other member of the body is so difficult to control. Like an untamed horse, it gets beyond one’s control at an unexpected moment. Therefore psalmist and apostle agree that it must be held as with a bridle.
What bridle may be put on our unruly tongues? Let us at least stop long enough to ask ourselves three questions before we repeat any report or turn our tongues loose in an matter.
Is it true? We are too hasty to believe every evil report. Many as innocent person has been injured by a tale that was without foundation. It is a serious matter to do an injustice to a fellow man by a report that we spread. The first thing, the least thing that one can do before he passes on a story that has come to him, is to stop long enough to ask if it is true. One of the ten fundamental laws of character is, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
Is it kind? It is not always kind to repeat what is true. The meanness which finds a secret pleasure in another’s fall or failure is a most despicable vice. Some one has called it “an innate vulgarity which loves to trample on fallen greatness.” To find such a thing in our hearts should bring us to our knees, for it is most unkind and un-Christly. We are not here to play the rôle of detectives, but rather are we to be brothers. There is nothing more unkind than gossip.
Is it necessary? In repeating an evil tale we should ask what is our motive in so doing. Is it that we hope to remedy the situation, or is it merely for the satisfaction of telling the thing/ If we repeat a story because it is necessary for the well-being of another, we are not gossipers, but helpers. If, however, it be for no good purpose, we should leave it untold. Under no conditions should we permit ourselves to be advertisers of another’s faults.
If we should leave unsaid the things that we are untrue and unkind and unnecessary, gossip would be at an end. Put that bridle on your tongue and buckle it tight. It will tame the tongue’s unruly disposition. “If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, that man’s religion is vain.”
