The Power of Life and Death

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18:21

If you ever sit down and read a medical textbook and I do sometimes because I’m cursed with an overwhelming curiosity to understand how and why things work. But, if you ever read through the section describing the body’s organs you will notice that one vital organ is missing, the tongue and yes the tongue is an organ. These books remember the brain and the heart and even the appendix, which is important, I just don’t remember why, but if it weren’t important then God wouldn’t have created it. You can look through these books all you want and you will never find anything about the tongue, the most obvious vital organ of all.

The tongue wields the power of life and death. That’s right, the tongue is the most powerful organ in the human body. It has the power to encourage and tear down, to build up and to destroy, to bless and to curse, without question, the human tongue is a powerful instrument and in its power is the ability to do evil or to do good. Consequently, believers need to carefully guard their tongues for it is an awesome force and influence in one’s life.

In the fall of 2013, 12 year old Rebecca Ann Sedwick committed suicide after nearly two years of merciless cyber-bullying. Some of her classmates had been posting hate messages on her Facebook page and sending her texts saying things such as: “You’re ugly,” “Why are you still alive,” and “You should just kill yourself.”

The “pen” or in today’s society, the “keyboard” truly is mightier than the sword…

In Genesis 1, God spoke into the darkness, and there was light. Those “mere words” created something from nothing, showing the power of speaking out. This verse had meaning for us, too, since we are created in God’s image. We are meant to speak out and bring light from the darkness as He did. That’s the power of the tongue in a crazy world. The question is whether we choose to speak light or just add to the darkness.

That little muscle called the tongue holds the power of life and death. That’s no small matter. So let’s be careful how we exercise it.

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