¹⁹ The more you talk, the more likely you are to sin. If you are wise, you will keep quiet.

-Proverbs 10:19 GNT

My mouth sometimes gets me into trouble.

I do not speak impulsively. If anything, I err on the side of caution.

That said, the first draft of my thoughts is often not the one that works best. It may be convoluted. It may be harsh. It may not be ready for prime time. In high school, I started walking around with water. When somebody asked me a question, I would take a drink. That way I had a moment to choose my words.

I’m a writer. To me a thought should be crafted. The art is to be able to quickly produce something of quality. Not instantly. And when you go for instantly, you end up saying dumb stuff.

I also use humor as both a coping mechanism and a teaching tool. Done correctly, it is helpful. But humor always involves risk. People may not get it. People may not find it funny. I may not find funny once it comes out of my mouth. Responding to a serious comment with a joke can be risky.

Doing it when you didn’t hear the initial comment clearly can be deadly.

Effective communication demands attention to context. We need to be in tune with our audience. We need to read the room.

That’s where digital culture can get messy. It’s impossible to read the room because you don’t even fully know who is there. You know who's talking but not who's listening. You may know the people talking but not what they are talking about. They may have been your conversation partners yesterday, but not today. You are missing a ton of information.

You can habitually invite yourself to events you know nothing about with people you don’t know, talking about things you don’t understand. By virtue of your access, however, you may be feel tempted, or even compelled to jump in. And that can get messy quickly.

That is one of my beefs with social media. It encourages us to respond quickly, even instantly, to things that demand at least a moment’s thought, if not a few hours of reading, or even a few years of study. But we read two articles and deem ourselves ready to rumble. I see your PhD and raise you my Ph MEEEE.

Invariably, though, we will be engaging with a few people for whom this is a passion. So they don’t need time to think. They eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. They study patterns you might not even realize you are perpetuating. You original thought may be truly original, and may be the same "original thought" that a million other people are shouting right now, and generations of people have shouted before 

The idea that everyone needs to hear all our thoughts is a curious conceit.

I speak publicly when it’s called for. I speak privately when it’s helpful. And I speak silently when I can.

And look, we need to be people who speak honestly. If we are censoring our thoughts because we don’t want to rock the boat, or because we erroneously think we have the power to make somebody else happy, we are in error.

The Proverb speaks to an emotional reality. Sometimes we need to deal with our feelings instead of just verbalizing them. If we speak impulsively out of anger, pride, envy, greed, fear, or lust, we will not add anything good to the conversation.

When we don’t want to take responsibility for our words, we will dismiss them as harmless. They’re just words, they don’t matter. Words, however, express ideas, desires, intents, and plans.

Words change relationships.

1. If you tell a stranger you’d like to punch them in the face, it changes your relationship. If you tell them you’re going to punch them in the face, it changes it all the more.

2. If you tell a friend that you’ve always wanted to be more than friends because your heart longs for them and you can’t stop thinking about them, it changes your relationship.

3. If you call someone the most vicious names you can think of, the ones you know will hurt them the most, it changes your relationship.You can apologize, but you can't take it back.

These are things we do when we communicate impulsively.

We change relationships.

Sometimes we end relationships.

Considering our words before we speak is never a bad thing.

If you are wise, you will keep quiet.

(Photo Credit: Alexander Krivitskiy)

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