{"id":83,"date":"2007-07-22T07:59:30","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T12:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.livingbythewordsofgod.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2007-07-22T07:59:30","modified_gmt":"2007-07-22T12:59:30","slug":"sticks-and-stones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"Sticks and stones&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will absolutely destroy our neighbor.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it.<br \/>\nThink about how much as Christians we intentionally ignore God&#8217;s teaching concerning how we talk, our misinformation, joining the prayer chain to keep up on the gossip, giving false witness to conversations and events to enhance our position in a relationship with a person or a group, getting revenge by cultivating a story that damages another person&#8217;s reputation because we are angry and resentful.<\/p>\n<p>Let it fly, baby.\u00a0 That&#8217;s right.\u00a0 As the wife of a previous associate once told me concerning a problem she was having on the job:\u00a0 &#8220;They don&#8217;t know who they&#8217;re messing with.&#8221;\u00a0 And she said this like it was a good thing.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(Proverbs 25:18 GW)\u00a0 Like a club and a sword and a sharp arrow, so is a person who gives false testimony against his neighbor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But we don&#8217;t think about it because we choose not to.\u00a0 Too much information.\u00a0 Too much information that would convict my sinful soul.\u00a0 Too much dissonance for a rebellious heart.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t confuse me with the facts, even if the source is God.<\/p>\n<p>So I will slant the account, bend the facts, give false testimony or witness, and in doing so God tells me that I am clubbing the person with a sledge hammer, cutting and stabbing them with a sword and piercing them with an arrow.<\/p>\n<p>And we do it without a second thought.<\/p>\n<p>Why?<br \/>\nBecause this is our nature and this is our behavioral pattern in interpersonal relationships.<\/p>\n<p>In short, this is how we do things, in spite of what God says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will absolutely destroy our neighbor. Think about it. Think about how much as Christians we intentionally ignore God&#8217;s teaching concerning how we talk, our misinformation, joining the prayer chain to keep &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=83\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-to-the-christians"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dxA8-1l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}