- Proverbs 25:18 (NIV)
Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow is the man who gives false testimony against his neighbor.
Went to my annual safety training class yesterday. One thing we discussed was the potential lethal nature of operating a forty ton machine. If I assume too much, serious consequences can easily be the result. The slightest, careless movement can mean a crushed hand, leg or even death to someone working around me. And I may not see or hear a thing, oblivious to the damage I have caused.
- Proverbs 25:18 (NASB)
Like a club and a sword and a sharp arrow Is a man who bears false witness against his neighbor.
Every time I read that verse I think of the damage done by our careless words. And I often believe that even when we intend to be mean and petty, we really are oblivious to the full extent of the damage done, to our opponent and to ourselves. We meant to hurt but not kill. What we don’t realize is that in the process we are also killing ourselves. Just as I could if not careful slip my foot off the brake at the wrong time and crush someone’s hand attaching a cable or chain, so it is with the heavy damage from our words.
“But I didn’t realize.”
And I would answer but God tells us. Usually we don’t know because we don’t want to know, too wrapped up in our own “worlds” to survey the damage done. Our society gives its blessing to pay back. But God says never pay back, not even with our words.
- 1 Peter 3:9 (NIV)
Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
And some miss their inheritance, a total whiff on what God desired for their life. When we twist the truth, spin the story, even just bumping it enough off center to fit our agenda, we swing our club or wield our sword or shoot our arrow.
Unless …
Unless you are the exception to what God says is true for every other person who has walked the planet from 900 B. C. to A. D. 2012. Sadly (very sadly) I have known too many Christians over the years whose pursuit of happiness denies and defies the way of Jesus, the path to which he calls us. Their agenda is important enough, maybe even God’s work, to grant them a “club exclusion” when it comes to people who get in their way.
Negative? Harsh? Not positive? Then talk to God. He’s the one who said it.
When we give a false account of the facts against a neighbor and turn the story away from the truth. When we embrace the lie, we become part of the lie and the damage therewith. This is the plot, the story line, we have joined.
Violent, damaging … That’s what God says.
That’s the nature of a club, a sword and a sharp arrow. God didn’t confuse his words.
- Proverbs 25:18 (NIV)
Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow is the man who gives false testimony against his neighbor.
