“Therefore each of you must put off
falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor.”
-Ephesians 4:25
The late Amy Carmichael, missionary
leader in India, said that her mission – the Dohnavur Fellowship – had a rule
for conversation: “The absent one must be safe among us.” That was her way of
reminding people that to talk about another person in a derogatory or degrading
way in their absence, when we would never say the same thing in their presence,
takes unfair advantage of a person.
Amy Carmichael was not the first to
observe such a principle. Some fifteen centuries before, St.Augustine had a motto over his table which
read, “He that speaks an idle word against an absent man or woman is not welcome
at this table.” Augustine had remembered the words of Jesus who said, “I say
unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account
thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36).
According to one statistician, the
average person spends 13 years of his life talking. In a day, the average
person speaks 18,000 words – enough to fill a book of 54 pages. In a year, his
words put in print would fill 66 books of 300 pages each. A great many of those
words concern other people, and often would be better unsaid. If we could only
see ourselves as others see us, or hear ourselves as others hear us, we would
learn to check our comments involving other people.
Should you be tempted to pass on a
savory bit of news, remember Amy Carmichael’s motto: “Wherefore,” wrote the
Apostle Paul, “Putting away lying; speak every man truth with his neighbor, for
we are members one of another.” (Ephesians 4;25)
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