Watch Your Mouth!

“How can your empty clichés comfort me? All your explanations are lies!” [Job 21.34]

As the ongoing dialog evolves between Job and his friends, there is much said that seems absolutely unessential to the conversation...

This verse today is a question and exclamation from Job to one of his friends, Zophar. It highlights the problem when people don't just shut up and wait for God to speak.

So much of what is "said" in Christianity is drawn from a remembrance of phrases and ideas spoken by someone else. While a cliché may be good to a certain degree, it also reeks of the lack of discipline found in ignorance.

Clichés are generally something someone else has said at some point in time. As powerful as the saying was at its initial introduction, it potentially loses its meaning and power over time - it loses its relevance. Its like that copy-of-a-copy thing - it gradually loses the sharpness of the original. And, nothing is worse than a conversation with no relevance to the issue at hand.

The problem with quoting a cliché is potential for the absence or knowledge of the intimate knowledge of the meaning of it. Saying something someone else said is only as good as the intricate detail of meaning of which what is said relates to whom it is said by whom it was said!

How can anyone truly convey the meaning of a cliché if they were not intimately involved in the "first speaking" of it? They might... but an element of doubt must remain because who can really know the heart and mind of the first person to ever orate that phrase and the condition in which it was spoken?

It seems prudent to me that, in light of extenuating circumstances, we should all be slow to speak and quick to listen (a cliché in itself).

And then there is this... When we speak of circumstances we cannot be absolutely sure of, it is highly prudent to stay true to what we know is absolutely true. That would be God's Holy Word.

So, how about this: If you repeat something that was said, let it be something God said. Otherwise, how can we be absolutely sure of the accuracy and integrity of it?

Father, once again today, I am reminded of the importance of watching my mouth...