Knives & Tongues

We had some visitors on Sunday from the Midlands. One gentleman remarked upon the number of ‘honesty boxes’ he encountered in our parts. Whether for eggs, or flapjack, or parking, one simply pops the coins inside and procures the product or service. He remarked that down his way, folk would take the product for free and the honesty box’s contents as a bonus! If the northmen are slightly more trustworthy than the Mercians, I salute them. 

Yesterday, I travelled south: I have come down to our capital. There is an obvious contrast between the lanes and fields of East Lancashire through which I was only cycling to chapel on Sunday and where I am now found. At home, there are fields with some houses next to them; here, there is housing and buildings everywhere, with some small, open spaces every couple of streets. Surprisingly, one of the locals actually acknowledged me when I gave way to her on the pavement; she likely has northern ancestry.

I am staying in Islington and wandered through Highbury Fields to explore the area and inspect a couple of churches. Next to some recycling bins was another kind of repository, one into which Londoners could place their knives and other illegal weapons. That’s right, Word for Weapons: Collecting Knives, Saving Lives boxes are found at various points in the park. Another sharp contrast with home-sweet-home. Much as I admire London, I love Lancashire: its cheerful people, its rural beauty and its relative safety. As I rather snootily photographed Islington’s Knife Bins, congratulating myself on living where we have honesty boxes instead, I reflected on the deadly weapon we Christians sometimes use against each other. There are few parliamentary statutes prohibiting its use, and no common law precedents outlawing its deployment, for I speak of the tongue. The God of heaven forbids our slandering each other, which is a particularly cruel practice, along with gossip, slander’s malignant little brother. To speak ill of someone else is satisfying at the point of its commission, but it wounds and damages beyond all conception. We may not carry guns like our American cousins, nor knives like our southern neighbours, but we are each equipped with a lethal armament. When we use it to hurt others, we hurt also ourselves.

See how great a forest a little fire kindles And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. James 3:5b-12, NKJV

There is no amnesty box into which we might place our tongues, but we would be well advised to deploy them sparingly -at all times.