Talking to you is a waste of my breath.
Has anyone of you ever suffered such an insult? I wonder what could be more dismissive, more hateful, more calculatedly cruel? Someone once said this to me. Someone I loved. I have never forgotten it (as you can see).
How horribly we people treat one another sometimes. It makes you wonder if we were not really God's single mistake, as Mark Twain suspected. The only thing wrong with humanity is the human being.
See how great a forest a little fire kindles! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.
--James 3:5-12
Yet so they are.
We are inclined, in the corruption of our nature, to be careless and not careful, hard and not tender, judgmental and not tolerant.
"Hear and understand: Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man."
--Matthew 15:10-11
So said Jesus. And yet we have still not heard.
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