The teacher was working one-on-one with her student, trying to impart wise and valuable insights to him. He stared up at her in wonder, as though all the answers to life’s mysteries might be found behind her eyes.
“Mrs. So-and-so, how do you do that?” he soulfully asked.
“Do what, dear?” the teacher responded.
“How do you make so much hair grow out of your nose?”
This true story was related to me recently by a teacher – it actually happened to her. It reminded me how dangerous the double-edged sword of honesty can sometimes be.
Way back when my boys began to learn how to talk – and before they became teenagers and forgot again — life took an interesting turn. Suddenly, going out in public was fraught with peril, as we never knew what might come forth from their innocent and lethal lips.
“Mommy!” two-year-old Ryan boomed one day after eyeing an acquaintance across the room. “Miss So-and-So is fat, isn’t she?”
“SSSSSSHHHHHHHH!” I desperately whispered, placing my hand squarely over his chops.
“But Mommy – it’s true – she IS Fat,” he bellowed again, obviously feeling a deep need to share his observation with the entire free world.
“Ryan,” I gasped, cupping his cheeks in my mitts in a futile attempt to control what was passing out of his brutally honest mouth. “It’s not nice to say things like that.”
“Why not? Miss So-and-So IS fat. Doesn’t she know it? How come she is fat? I’m not fat, am I? How’d she get that way?”
“No Ryan, you are not fat. Would you want someone to call you that? Wouldn’t that hurt your feelings?” I asked in my best June Cleaver voice.
“Mommy, will I be fat someday? I want to be fat just like Miss So-and-So.”
I just slammed my eyes shut and shook my blushing head in utter frustration. The boy just wasn’t getting it.
This scene was repeated enough times to age me considerably. When a skinny man approached, I broke out in beads of sweat. Was Ryan going to ask if that’s what happens to people who don’t eat all of their broccoli? Uh-oh – there was a lady with a “unique” hairstyle – my knees weakened. Was Ryan going to demand to know why her head looked like a roll of paper towels?
Children — and sadly, some adults — have one of God’s principles down pat – they definitely know how to “speak the truth …”. It’s that other half – “in love” – that trips them up.
I’ve heard it said that the words we speak are like buckets of confetti tossed into a brisk wind. Once the breeze catches all those tiny bits of paper, there is no way we can ever retrieve them. Some weeks, I feel like I’ve scattered paper all over the Western Hemisphere – and too much of it has not been uplifting or encouraging. I’d like to get it all back and try again – but ah, that’s the thing – we can’t.
Sometimes love demands absolute, transparent and even painful honesty. And sometimes it demands silence. It takes wisdom to know the difference. Our words only bring life and please God when they flow from a well of love.
An honest mouth can be a deadly weapon, indeed, when it’s attached to an immature brain or an unloving heart.
“… For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” – Matthew 12:34b
“Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear.” – Ephesians 4:29
“… (there is) a time to be silent, and a time to speak.” – Ecclesiastes 3:7