Bill Mounce has written a Eph 2:49" href="http://www.koinoniablog.net/2009/02/eph-429-and-blogs.html" target="_blank">great post over at the Koinonia blog about our speech and anger.  He has some deep and well thought through insights and applications that apply to all of us.  Here’s a snippet, but if you have the time, go read the whole thing:

One of the patterns that I have noticed is that we often are justified in our anger, and that anger vents itself in ungodly language that clearly violates the clear teaching of Scripture. But because our anger is so strong, and our justification so deep, we feel that not only are we justified to speak in corrupting and graceless ways, but that we have some sort of divine mandate to do so. It would be wrong, we reason, to speak any other way.

I have often commented to myself (and those around me) that gossip, slander, and critical speech are the native tongue in the church.

We see this expressed in different ways among ADM’s and the writers here, and we might be inclined to see the errors of others, but I’d like to encourage you to think about your own responses to other people when you get angry.

Tags: anger, language, self-justification, vulgarity

Friends,

I am currently reading Eugene Peterson’s newest spiritual theology Tell It Slant. Peterson is full of wisdom and his insight into Scripture is masterful. He has a way of cutting to the quick and laying out his argument with short, terse, and dead-on statements.You should read Eugene Peterson–a lot.

In the threads here, we often find ourselves in ‘conversations’ that devolve into ‘arguments.’ One person says something, another responds. Back and forth it goes. Someone is then called out and then they begin the justification of their statements. Threads are often derailed in this fashion. Peterson has fine words for this in commenting on Luke 10:25-37, and especially the scholar’s need to ‘justify himself’:

We feel the need for justification only when we sense that we are not quite in the right. Maybe there is more to life than orthodoxy. Self-justification is a verbal device for restoring the appearance of rightness without doing anything about the substance…We don’t like being thought bad or inadequate or stupid. (39)

Well, these are short thoughts, so that’s all I’ll give you. It’s just something to think about on your journey and in your conversations and in your interactions with those of Christ and those not.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Tags: Eugene Peterson, self-justification