Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Before you speak, ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid. Bernard Meltzer
My father was a stutterer. The professionals who study stuttering do not agree on its causes. Some say it is a neurological problem, others say that it is environmental. It does tend to run in families and is more prevalent in some social subgroups than others. And generally it is a malady of childhood that resolves itself in time.
In my father's case, however, he was the only one in the family who had the problem and it got worse as he got older. I am certain that his horrific experiences in WWII made it worse. For him it was a nervous disorder and it was a serious handicap that made him self-conscious and held him back from having the confidence to further his education or his career.
Like the country music singer, Mel Tillis, my dad could sing without stuttering but when he was upset about something, which he was a lot of the time, he could hardly talk.
So, when in graduate school I came across research into stuttering, I was naturally very interested. Researchers were surprised to discover that among many Native American tribes, there was no instance of stuttering and in their native languages; there was no word for stuttering.
As with anything anyone says about the Indian nations, you can't generalize the whole of what amounted to many different tribes with some unique genetic markers, but still, something that is a problem for about 1% of the population everywhere else to simply not occur in many native tribes was remarkable.
Further research indicated that the tribes where there was no stuttering that children were raised fairly permissively with no expectations placed on them for any public performance competition in speaking, storytelling, or religious rituals. That is, kids grew up not being shamed or pressured into situations where they were judged harshly and in the absence of fear and shame, there was no halting speech, no anxiety about peer judgment or rejection.
And even those who want to insist upon a neurological explanation for stuttering have to admit that all of the effective treatments are psychological... not to say that physiology doesn't play a part but it seems evident that stuttering is just one possible reaction to a mean world.
There are lots of birds, animals, fish, and even insects that have developed language of sorts that they use in their mating rituals, in hunting, defending their territory, and even in nurturing their young. However, humans, the most evolved and advanced of language capable beings are the only ones that have developed the ability to destroy another person's life simply through the use of language.... Which, if anyone is watching my grammar closely, might cause one to question the use of the word "evolution" in this paragraph because evolution implies improvement. The ability to insult, slander, destroy people's reputation, rob them of self-confidence, and push them to the point of self-loathing or even suicide, can hardly be called an evolutionary advance.
Ironically, the better we have become at communicating, the more efficient we have become in using communication to hurt people. In marriage counseling, we teach conflicted couples to talk to one another while touching one another. The more distance there is between two people the more likely they are to use abusive, angry, or violent language.
If there is a table between you, or if one is standing on the other side of the room, the conversation is more likely to turn ugly. It is very difficult to raise your voice when you are holding hands looking into one another's eyes. However, turn that into a phone call, or a letter, or especially an email and things can get ugly pretty fast.
Social media sites on the internet are great for staying in touch with family and friends, showing pictures of our kids, sharing our travels and some people even feel obliged to share photos of their meals and keep us up to date on the antics of their cats. But social media, because it is communication at a distance, is also rife with insults, put-downs, slander, gossip, and lies.
The New Testament, written two thousand years before the launching of Face Book, includes a stern warning in the third chapter of James that says that the tongue is like a small flame that can set a forest on fire. If James had only known about how you could comment on line about people's articles, or send hate-filled emails to total strangers around the globe, he might have called the tongue a flamethrower rather than a small fire.
Even humor is something we should take seriously. Almost every joke has a victim.
We talk about negative humor but it is nearly impossible to tell a joke that doesn't come at someone's expense and the rhetoric only heats up when the brunt of our jokes is a public figure, especially a politician who is running for office.
I took as our wisdom lesson today, a quote from an unusual source. Bernie Meltzer was a popular radio talk show host in New York during the 70's and 80's. Even though the title of his show was "What's Your Problem?"..., which, in his New York studio, could have been translated, "Hey, whatsamatta you?" he was still concerned with civility. He said:
Before you speak, ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid.There are things that are true that are neither helpful nor kind. There is a way that you can be so right that you are wrong and one of those ways is by pushing a personal agenda in a way that harms others unnecessarily. There are times when you can be satisfied simply with knowing that you are right without trying to get your spouse to acknowledge that fact! We should not remain silent about important things out of fear but there are times when we can choose to be silent out of love or basic kindness.
We have heard a lot in this campaign year about "political correctness," and even when Megan Kelly asked candidate Donald Trump a serious question about his dismissive language about women, Latinos, and the Chinese, he dismissed the question as being just another political correctness matter and the crowd burst into applause.
And, I'll admit, as a writer and a public speaker, I also sometimes find it infuriating to be called out on what seems to me to be harmless and insignificant issues. I got called out a few months ago for using the word "transgendered" in an article in which I was defending the civil rights of our local trans community.
Because for many people who are changing their gender identity, it is not a past tense event but an ongoing and sometimes even a fluid thing.... So they prefer to be called transgender rather than the past-tense, transgendered. It seems a bit picky to me except that I am not a member of the trans community and so maybe I should just call them what they want to be called.
In a sermon a few years ago, I referred to a bi-racial child as being mulatto. I had no idea that the word was offensive. In fact, it is a Spanish word that is used in Latin America where it evidently is not offensive but it is here. Again, I am not the son of a mixed race marriage so maybe I should just not use a term that offends people who are.
After becoming a father by means of international adoption, after sleepless nights, bottles, dirty diapers, added expenses, babysitters, clothes, shoes, and even college, now and then someone will ask me, "Do you know anything about her real parents," and when they ask that all I can think of is if there is a good place to hide the body of the person who asked me that insulting question...because the two teenagers who had sex in Seoul, Korea one night 26 years ago are not the ones who folded the laundry, paid the tuition, and rushed to several scenes where she had wrecked her car....again.
People who never adopted a child may mean no harm in asking such a question but I'm suggesting that it is in everyone's best interest for them to watch what they say.
Jeb Bush got himself in trouble recently by using the term "anchor baby" in reference to the children of illegal immigrants who gain American citizenship by virtue of being born here. It's one of those messy little provisions of the American Constitution!
He tried to mend fences with the Hispanic community by saying that he really wasn't talking about Hispanics, he was just talking about Asians.... Which was a fairly incomprehensible move to me but I am no one to explain the reasoning of Republican candidates.
It even strikes a tad close to home for Louisiana governor and presidential candidate, Bobby Jindal, who was born in Louisiana to non-citizen parents who were here on student and work visas who only became citizens after Bobby was born.... Oh, and Bobby is not his real name... it is the name of his favorite character on The Brady Bunch.
His name is Piyush Jindal... that's not relevant except that I wish that he could remember to be both thankful for how he gained his citizenship and be gracious to others whose claim to citizenship is not much different.
I am, in that regard, an anchor dad. My daughter's only claim to American citizenship is because she was adopted by an American citizen but I think that America is a much better place because she is here. I hope to be able to feel the same way about Piyush Jindal but he is testing me a bit.
You see what I meant about humor almost always having a victim?
This church came into existence with the state purpose of being a prophetic church that spoke the truth to power, as a voice for the poor and the marginalized. We speak the truth in public protests, demonstrations, letters to the editor, and we would even in town hall meetings if only our congressman would hold town hall meetings that admitted anyone other than his donors.
The challenge I want to bring to you today is to be bold, courageous, outspoken, well-informed, and prophetic, and I am asking you to do your best to do those things in a way that is kind, considerate, even loving because this world can be so mean that it can make a child stutter, and make many more hide their gifts and their potential because they are afraid of being criticized or shamed.
We want to bring light and not so much heat into the world. We want to be the salt of the earth, not the anti-freeze in people's Gatorade. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with us.
