Mean Speak
Do you swear?
When you swear, do you condemn or do you swear to support your claim that you are speaking the truth?
Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your 'Yes' be yes and your 'No' be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.- James 5:12
James tells us we should do neither. We should simply mean what we say and say what we mean, without being mean.
It sounds easy and I am sure many of us believe we do that most of the time.
Who wouldn't want to be thought of as honest?
I'd like to think it is still a desirable quality. Even though we may have our doubts about others, we choose to think we hold firm to our commitment to honesty, right?
Why is it so difficult to judge whether someone is being honest with us or not?
If someone is dishonest with us, do we bother to bring them back to honesty? Or do we give them a taste of their own medicine?
James goes on to commend those who bring someone back from wandering from the truth, from the way, from the path of life.
He believes we have a commitment to each other, not just to ourselves. Sure, we need to stay on the right road, to lock in our spot on the heavenly transport, but we can invite others along as well.
When I was young, we believed sin meant death. If you sinned, large or small, and you didn't make amends by confessing and committing to never repeat the sin, you would be damned to hell.
I know that as kids, we would forget about that last part. We knew we could get it right in time for the next Sunday Eucharist, and we didn't think about the possibility of running out of time.
Today, though, we don't talk about damnation in church. We have a much more liberal view of salvation, and as such, I think we have become lax in our commitment to each other. We can love one another, but we don't have to worry about helping each other stay on the path to salvation.
James would probably scratch his head in disbelief.
So, what do we do? Do we just let our 'Yes' be yes and our 'No' be no and let others be?
Or do we start practicing truly loving each other? Honestly.
More to come...