Tongue on Fire
1Dear family, most folks should drop the idea of becoming a teacher. Those of us who are teachers get judged more intensely. 2We all make plenty of mistakes. Let me tell you this, you’d be one perfect human if you could control the words that come out of your mouth. If you could do that, you could control your whole body too. 3We put an itsy-bitsy bit into the mouth of a huge horse. With that bit, we can get it to do what we want. We control the entire horse.4And what about ships? They are massive and driven by powerful winds. Yet we use a tiny rudder to steer them in whatever direction the ship’s captain wants to go. 5The tongue is small too. But it talks big. A small flame can set a huge forest on fire. 6And the tongue is a flame, set on fire by hell itself. The tongue is a wicked world all its own grafted into the world of our body. It corrupts every part of our body and sets our life on fire. 7People have tamed all kinds of critters and birds and reptiles and even sea creatures.
8No one has tamed the tongue. It’s a wild and bucking evil, spitting killer poison. 9With this tongue of ours, we praise our Lord and Father. Then we cuss to high heaven those humans made in God’s image. 10Out of one mouth comes praising and cussing. Dear family, that’s just wrong. 11Does a spring give you fresh water some of the time and salt water other times? 12Come on, family, can a fig tree grow olives or a grapevine grow figs? No, and you’re not going to draw fresh water from a saltwater pond, either.
Wisdom Is Well Behaved
13Are there any of you out there who are truly wise and understanding? I’ll tell you how you can show it. Behave yourself; live an exemplary life. Whatever work you do, do it with a gentle spirit. That’s what the children of wisdom look like. 14If you’re someone who has a lot of bitterness, jealousy, and selfish ambition rolling around inside of your heart, do everyone a favor. Don’t get so full of yourself that when you come face-to-face with the truth, you lie.15Wisdom from God above is nothing like that. So-called wisdom like this isn’t spiritual at all. It comes from this world or from demons. 16Wherever you find jealousy and selfish ambition, you’re going to find chaos and every kind of evil that exists.
17Here’s what wisdom from God above looks like. It’s transparently pure, peace loving, gentle, reasonable, merciful, generous, and without a trace of prejudice or hypocrisy. 18Peacemakers plant seeds of peace. At harvesttime they haul in a crop of goodness. [1]
