In time for Halloween, I came across something terrifying this week. I found it bingeing on YouTube videos, which I promised not to do. But it turns out I am a liar. My assurances of kicking the habit were as reliable as any other addict’s, which is to say not at all. I thought I could do it, but I found myself stepped in so far that going back would have been as bad as moving forward, to mangle Lady Macbeth. There’s also something in there about a lake of blood, which is a good Halloween image, but I’ll leave that to the reader.
The terrifying thing is found in Matthew’s Gospel, 12:36-37, where Jesus says to the Pharisees and crowd: “I tell you that for every careless word that people speak, they will give an account of it on the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Tell me that isn’t frightening. Convince me that there is hope. Explain to me how there can be even one justified man or woman in the world. I’d be willing to go with a righteous child, but kids these days seem to be too clever by half. There isn’t any leeway, either. It reads, “every careless word,” which means just about everything that comes out of my mouth. Inspired by polling videos on YouTube, I tried to come up with a percentage of careless versus careful, a sort of red-blue comparison, but it wasn’t pretty. I am a condemned man.
In previous posts, I’ve talked about how hard it is to keep my mouth shut, which is why I am drawn to the ritual prayer during the incensing of the offerings in the old Latin Mass: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and a door round about my lips. Incline not my heart to evil words: to make excuses in sins.” Admittedly, it flows better in Latin. Putting doors round about lips is an awkward image but actually no less so than putting a curb on the tongue. The point to all of this, whether English or Latin, is not to be a little bitch.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? In a society that experiences material excess of everything, the tendency to act like a little bitch is overwhelming. The task of a lifetime is not to let that happen, to battle the inner bitch so that the mature man or woman can emerge as if from a cocoon. It’s really that simple but, like most simple things, one of the hardest things to do.
I hate to say it, but this election has proven this in spades, and it is hard to ignore. Careless words have been lobbed by both camps like hand grenades. It’s disgusting to watch. Unlike the wounds from sticks and bones, which heal with time, the damage caused by the explosion of words is often irreparable. Just to list some of the ones I overheard this week ad nauseam: Hitler, Nazi, fascist, garbage, execution, hateful, evil, murderer, internment camps, stupid, sick, low IQ, etc. You get the idea. That people have given themselves permission to run amok shows how low the level of political discourse has sunk. I’ve seen more decorum in a boxing ring.
This certainly can be analyzed in terms of collective hysteria or mass psychosis on both the Left and Right, as some have argued, although even then people can be unaware of their own complicity as they continue to point fingers at others. Projection occurs among all kinds of people, especially those with a lot to lose professionally, socially, and by reputation. And projection, unfortunately, can lead to unhinged behavior, as is all too evident.
But the quote from Matthew’s Gospel has me focused on language, which often reflects inner truths that come percolating to the surface. To put it simply, the words people use are not a mistake, not simply the result of market surveys or focus groups. They can reveal psychic realities on the personal level just as Jesus warned the Pharisees. The reckoning he spoke of will take place in and through language. That is, we will be judged by what comes out of our mouths, not what we put in them.
Even now, days before the election, it’s not too late to put doors round about our lips as long as we mean it and not just state platitudes about toning down the rhetoric as we ratchet it up. It might be what saves us. There will be a reckoning.
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