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Jon Kennedy's 'Postcards from
the Nanty Glo in My Mind'
Trash talk and the company we keep
Jonal entry 1063 | August 6 2008
Just one beggar trying to help his fellows find bread....
Last week we looked at 1 Corinthians 5:9-6:11, the passage from a New Testament letter by the Apostle Paul in which he teaches:
But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.... Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, or thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. |
This passage presents a specific case in which individual followers of Jesus are to judge (or make note of; "mark") the behavior of their fellow church members and decide whether to accept them as brothers and sisters or keep their distance from them as corrupting influences. We looked at the passage as an important confirmation (one among many in the New Testament) of the teaching of the church on sexual morality. The warning, to "not even eat with such a person" seems to clearly teach that sexual immorality and the other sins ennumerated are grounds for barring anyone engaging in such practices from the Lord's Table (Communion, the Eucharist).
Looking more deeply, I think this passage is also a source of the Christian community's long-standing aversion to "trash talk." For how is the individual church member going to know about another member's—or would-be member's—morality? Notorious sins (like living as though married but not) may be known throughout a community, but more commonly the conversation of new followers are the main clues about their character. If they idolize money, success, or treat lightly the lusts of the flesh, you'll soon know it if you get acquainted. Later in this same letter to the church in Corinth, Apostle Paul teaches that "evil communications corrupt good manners," (1 Corinthians 15:33).
And in another of his letters, Paul tells the church in Ephesus: "Let no corrupt communication come out of your mouth, but that which is good and edifying, that it may convey grace to those who hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you have been sealed to the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:29-30). Trash talk, then, is not only unedifying, it corrupts its hearers. And in the teaching of Jesus, He says dirty talk corrupts those who talk such things themselves. Matthew's Gospel quotes Jesus: "That which goes into the mouth does not defile a man, but that which comes out of the mouth is what defiles him," Matthew 15:11, and "those things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they corrupt the man," Matthew 15:18.
Our post-modern times and their ubiquitous mass communications media are in many cases as dark and given over to evil as the Roman Empire in the time of Jesus and Paul, and even at times surpass them. There is nothing new under the sun, Ecclesiastes says. Surely when it comes to trash talk, nothing in the ancient world could compete with the talk on subscription (and late-night free) Cable TV channels and the R-rated movies, and what is heard on those channels is also commonplace on crowded sidewalks and not even unheard-of during church coffee hours.
| And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. |
Though
we are to mark and bar from the table those whose talk indicates perverse preoccupations,
we are also to forgive and encourage any signs of reformations in those wanting
to change their walk, and their talk.
Funny Bones
GREAT THINKERS OF OUR TIME...
"Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but I can't remember what they are."
---Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show
"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."
---David Dinkins, New York City
Mayor, (answering
accusations that he failed to pay his taxes)
"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
---Brooke
Shields, during an interview to become
spokesperson for a federal antismoking
campaign.
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