7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, 8 but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.
I looked back at a decade's worth of Edifiers and I haven't realy hit this passage well; this was yesterday's sermon verse.
One point that was made in the sermon is you don't have to curse folks to do damage. Sometimes, saying nothing, giving people the silent treatment, can be a sin of omission that can be bigger than chewing out the person you're mad at; at least when you chew them out, they get an idea why you're POed at them. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say nothin' at all" doesn't always work.
Another pet peeve of mine is sarcasm; the sneaky part of sarcasm is that the would-be-witster can retreat to "I was just joking" to try to escape blame for the hurt. The preacher mentioned this run at the expense of Anthony Davis' "unibrow" last week (the pastor didn't mention Davis by name, but how many other unibrows are out there?); if you look at Davis' expression, the first jab was funny, the second and third and fourth were piling on and wanting the comic to move the crosshairs onto someone else.
Those are things that can be just as hurtful as a f-bomb-laden tirade (way to stay classy, George) but don't show up on our don't-do-that list.
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