The Power of Words

Our church is currently embarking on a study of the book of James, and over the next week, we will be covering James 3:1-12 in our bible study groups on taming the tongue. It's not too difficult a passage to understand, but one that provides us with a massive challenge into an area of our lives which is quite often unwatched and not much attention given to.


The following quotation on the power of words is worth chewing on...


It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said and meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words.
If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative - then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people's lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university.
We seem to think that words aren't things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words - which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty.
We are all wounded inside in some way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.

(From Okri, B. Birds of Heaven (London: Phoenix, 1996), 3-5 quoted in Bauckham, R. James (London: Routledge, 1999), 205)