Eat My Words?

The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.” Matthew 15:11

“You are what you say”. That’s a little riff on the popular slogan, “You are what you eat.” Jesus makes no mistake about the powerful effect words have. We often refer to the damage they can do to the hearers. It is widely known that a spouse who is belittled year after year will eventually see themselves exactly as they have been spoken of. A person who was once confident and lively may, after a time, become reclusive and unsure.


What Jesus is saying is a bit different. He is talking about the effect words have, not on the hearer, but on the speaker. The words that come out of our mouths actually have the ability to make us “clean” or “unclean”.

Do you gossip or make snap decisions without hearing both sides of the story? Do you lie to change the way someone perceives you? Do you shade the truth just a little bit to get your own way? Jesus says these things are actually making a person unclean. The more we use words to deceive, hurt, or gain an edge over someone else, the less likely we are to be useful for God’s kingdom.

Doesn’t it seem silly to judge someone for smoking if there is a cesspool of verbal tar and nicotine coming out of our own mouths? Yes, this may apply to certain things called “swear” words. But keep in mind, that wasn’t Jesus’ meaning. We know that by who took offense at His words. It wasn’t the dock worker dropping an occasional (ok, not so occasional) colorful word. (Sorry dock workers, we all know bankers can swear like a sailor too. Oops, sorry sailors.)

Who took offense? The disciples told Jesus that he had insulted the Pharisees. I can tell you for a fact, these guys were not men with foul mouths; not in the “swear word” sense. They took it upon themselves to judge everyone but themselves, to call names of those different from them, and insinuate that those who disagreed with them had no place in God’s kingdom.

Jesus clearly tells us that this kind of language is actually making them unfit! The language they used to keep other people in their place was the very language that disqualified them from usefulness for God. So, many of us pass by the “bad words” of cussing, while using language in a way that is far worse.

We act as if any contact with certain types of people will make us dirty. We take the idea of separating ourselves from sinful acts, and make it mean separation from people. The filth on the beggar’s clothes is holiness when transferred to the shirt of a helper’s shirt. The smell on the homeless man’s breath is perfume to the person stopping to aid them. The stench of death on the dying AIDS patient is the aroma of life on the worker who speaks hope to them.

What about me? Do my words identify me as one with compassion for the lowly? Or am I more concerned with keeping a clean appearance? How important are the words you speak about other? They are so important that they define exactly who you are, not the one spoken about.

How are my words defining me today? Am I using them in the way Christ did? Am I holding out forgiveness and reconciliation to those who have been left behind? Do I speak with respect about those I may also disagree with? Our words affect our inner life. Control your speech and you will produce the same thing inside that comes out of your mouth.

Words, simple tones, breaths, syllables, vowels and consonants. But, given language they have power. Given power, they have the ability to change the world. Let the words of our mouths, all of them, each day, be acceptable to God, our Rock and our Redeemer.