Watch your language! This should be the message of the day, for everyone on all sides. As alternative facts, misinformation, obfuscation, dishonesty, intimidation, and divisive rhetoric escalate, the critical need for calm, balanced, consistent, and systemic common sense has never been greater. Unless we can tone down our diatribes, we may well pass a point of no return, where any form of consensus, cooperation, collaboration, or compromise is impossible.

Our collective media – social, corporate, corrupt, and convoluted – must become tools for unification and healing rather than weapons of mass destruction. Not liking a person, a perspective, a position, or a politics does not grant us the right or the freedom to let loose a tirade of hyperbolic bombast, tangentially connected to any truth, veracity, or validity.

I note that journalists, commentators, and editors have taken to writing that the opposition (of whatever position they hold) have “humiliated/disgraced/shamed/embarrassed” themselves in a wide variety of ways. However, once you get past the inflammatory headline, you find that the person under attack simply said something ignorant, or made a mistake, or lost their temper – essentially they acted like a flawed, less-than-perfect human being. Fine, you might not like the person all that much. You may even find them reprehensible, but don’t resort to a misuse of language to make them look worse than they already do.

To humiliate literally means to be “brought down (to earth, humus)” and it originally was intended to be a positive, communally engaged path to humility (a good thing). To disgrace is to “remove light” – to darken one’s spirit, essence, or reputation. To shame is to “bring dishonor.” And one can only be embarrassed when one possesses values they violate. We have a lot of people doing a lot of harm and damage, seemingly without a moral compass or an ethical GPS, but it begs the question whether they feel embarrassment, shame, guilt, disgrace or humiliation.

And what are the long term implications of twisting and skewing language to score a few ego points against those we oppose? Our words are already in danger of becoming meaningless at best, corrupt and damaging at worst. And why haven’t we learned this? We are a supposedly advanced, intelligent people, but this kind of salacious word salad is addressed in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We seem to have no clue what “let your yes be yes, and your no, no,” means. We are losing the capacity to “speak the truth in love.” We are celebratory when we become a “resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” People calling themselves Christian are glibly shouting “Raca,” “You fool,” with no concern for the judgmentalism involved.

As young children we are taught some simple rules of civility, respect, and common decency. Be kind, generous, caring, fair, merciful, and loving. Don’t scream, don’t call names, don’t hit, don’t insult or put down. Give complements rather than criticism. Do no harm; do good. If we can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. As members of the body of Christ, we may feel powerless to change the septic and cynical nature of our cultural communication, but we are countercultural at our very core. We can make the commitment NOT to add to the cesspool of reckless and damaging hyperbole. Let us speak plainly. Let us speak kindly. Let us speak well, so that others might speak well of us.