Be Precise In Your Speech - Part 3

 This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark or photo to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 10: Be Precise In Your Speech, pp. 279-83

Opening Thought: “Be precise in your speech”, is so much more than a cautious courtesy in our discourse with each other. It is a dedication to the pursuit of truth. Peterson begins the explanation of this rule by highlighting the immense complexity of reality, of “being” itself. This complexity is something each of us, (who are also immensely complex) must confront. If this was not challenging enough, people have the ability to distort reality in a number of ways: we can be dishonest, delude, ignore, seek vagueness, or choose ignorance. These distortions of reality make our confrontation with reality more difficult and less efficient. The nature of distortion is that it gives the impression that it is make our confrontation easier and simpler, but this only lasts for a moment, it’s a false fix and it creates a bigger dichotomy between yourself and reality. This process of distortion can happen both consciously and unconsciously which means people need to do their best to avoid this form of distortion. We cannot control the complexity of the world, or what may appear to us as chaos, nor can we control the complexity and chaos of other people, but what we can do is discipline ourselves to be seekers of truth. We must choose to avoid distortion, deception, and dishonesty as much as we can.

If this sounds like an uphill battle to you (and I’m sure it does to most, if not everyone), this should be a sign that your soul (psyche) is not living to its greatest potential as a moral and successful being within the world. Peterson does a fantastic job in framing this because he associates the challenges of the world with dragons of legend, we are called to ride out and face our dragons. The deceptions in the world are like the demons and monsters from the horrific side of legends. We are called to slay both. The challenges of life are overwhelming creatures that can harm us in deadly ways, and deceptions are the thing lurking in the shadows, which threatens to devour us when we least expect them. To be truth-telling, to speak clearly, to seek truth, clarity, and reality in all things is to draw your sword, turn the light towards the shadows and face the things that you fear. By speaking the truth you echo the reality which demons fear, and the truth which will give you the strength to slay the towering dragons.

Opening Prayer: Lord, You are the source of truth. When we speak the truth, we echo Your voice. When we lie, we speak only nonsense, corruption, and death. Help us to always speak the truth; give us courage, strength, and humility to face reality and become better for it. Amen.

Scripture: Romans 16:18 For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the minds of naive people.

Reflection: I cannot speak to how the minds of other people work; all I can do is speak from my own experience. I know for myself, that deception is something I find challenging because it can happen so quickly, that my mind sometimes can't keep track of it. I know occasionally in conversation I have said something, in response to someone’s question or probing, which has been inaccurate. This falsehood was not stated out of any conscious intent, but just something that came out of my mouth without any forethought. I often lose my train of thought at this moment because I catch the blunder, and then don’t know what to do. It seems awkward to halt the conversation over a slip of the tongue, but if I don’t then I’m being dishonest. It may not seem like a big deal to some people, but thanks to Peterson many have come to appreciate the gift of honesty, a reality shared first by the law in our bible.

There is a personal wonder and fascination with honesty. How much effort does it take me to feel like I have been honest a hundred percent of the time? For about 10 years, I have been working on honesty. Deceit was something in my adolescence I found to be a good tool for manipulation, but it isolated me, and I hated that. My wife and I discovered this together. I remember one time a family member invited us over to socialize. My wife and I were very busy that week and feeling whipped out, but we didn’t say, no thank you, we had a rough week, how about next week. Instead, we lied and told our family that we had other plans. I asked my wife, why did we say that? Turned out that we both didn’t want people to try to convince us to attend a social event knowing we were tired, alternate plans were a more pressing commitment than staying home to rest. So, we had lied, almost without thought. As a seminary student at the time, it didn’t sit right with me that we had fibbed so easily. My wife and I talked about it and we decided going forward that we would be transparent in our conversations, if we didn’t feel up for something we would say it boldly, and we would face the possibility of being challenged by friends and family and thus, needing to stand our ground if need be, or negotiate if the time called for it. Since then, I have found greater confidence in my interactions with people. Being able to say, yes or no, clearly, and definitively gave me more power over my life than any form of deceit.

I have noticed that the more I pay attention to these slips up, or even the time when I feel tempted to blatantly lie, the more self-control I have over my speech. The more self-control the more precise I am getting, and I have noticed my life is getting simpler, something I need more of. The most precise I get, the closer to God I feel because precision means I must be humble and truthful. If I don’t know something, I don’t pretend to so I can skate by, I say I don’t know, and then I seek clarity. Once clarity is found, I am wiser than I was before. If by chance, I do know something I say it with more confidence, as I feel good as what I do know is not hazed out by the murkiness of deceit.

Maybe the biggest challenge though with the precision of speech is the precision of thought. We have to be honest and truthful in our own heads. We need to avoid lying to ourselves. We need to be vulnerable to truth, humble in spirit, and courageous through Christ.

Challenge for the Week: Correct yourself when you speak falsely. Don’t allow yourself to welcome distortion into your exchanges with others. Serve them the truth, as Christ serves you the truth.

Prayer for your week: Lord, speak truth to us, reveal to us Your reality and being. Amen

Final Thought and Picture: We told the old story of the boy who cried wolf as a prank so many times when the real wolf arrived no one believed him. We must be mindful when we lie to ourselves because in one moment we can be the boy, the wolf, and the village all at once. If you don’t trust yourself, then you are bound to be devoured by the wolf inside.