If our sole criterion for judging the seriousness of particular sins is the number of times it is mentioned in Sacred Scripture, then most certainly sins of the tongue are among the most dangerous. St. James describes the danger in rather stark terms: “The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna” (James 3:6). Of course, he is reiterating what God gave to Moses in the Eighth Commandment which calls out our post-edenic speech impediment. But in our own age, because of a marked preference for verbosity over veracity, we ought to re-examine his warning lest the gravity of the tongue drag us into Gehenna.
Man has always struggled with simply following rules—not in the sense that he doesn’t follow them, but that he chooses how he is going to follow them. This is both the gift and burden of freedom. We can use these rules as boundaries or we can use them runways for freedom. We can find out how to stay within the strict letter of the law or we can learn how to use them to truly thrive. The choice is up to us, but the Church always leans towards the side of freedom. She gives us not just rules, but also reasons. She teaches ethics so that we can develop ethos.
On Telling the Truth
This is especially true when it comes to truth telling. Moralists have argued for centuries as to what constitutes a lie. Even the Catechism has had to change its definition since it was first released in 1992. The point is not that rules are unnecessary—there can be no gray without black and white—but that unless you understand why telling the truth is so important, you will always be trapped in a casuistic web. Truth telling matters because the truth matters. The truth matters because it is God Who through His Provident care has set reality as it really is. It is He Who has willed, directly or permissively, things to be the way they are. To distort that is to usurp God as God and to alter reality such that it is the way I want it to be. There is no color coding of lies, white or otherwise, because lying is first and foremost an offense against God’s Fatherhood.
Most people know a lie when they tell one, but sins of the tongue encompass so much more than just lying. It is the gray areas that often and unwittingly cause the most problems. There is gossiping, excuse making, calumny, slander, flattery, and detraction; all of which are just as, if not more, common than just straight up lying. This is because there seems to be no clear rules governing them. But once we look at the telos, or purpose, of our capacity for speech, we find a set of guiding principles emerging.
Among all the visible creatures, speech is the most distinctively human powers. Other animals may speak, but none can truly communicate. Our speech allows us to make visible what is otherwise invisible. Speech allows us to communicate not just facts or theories but our interior. It gives us the power to tell others exactly is going on inside of us. So important is this fact, that Our Lord also mentions it in a discussion with the Pharisees. “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts…” (Mk 7:21).
Truth and Communion
But speech is not just for us to download our thoughts, but it is given to us for communion. Made in the image of God, the Triune God that is in perfect communion through the Word, our speech is meant to be a power in which we give what is most intimate, our thoughts. But falsehood cannot bear the weight of communion, so that true communion can only happen when there is communication in truth. It is this last statement that animates the two guiding principles for the use of our tongue: truth and communion.
Truth is paramount for the reasons already mentioned, but not every situation calls for truth telling. Some situations call for truth withholding. Truth withholding is really about truth protecting, that is, protecting the truth from those who do not need to know it (detraction) or those who will exploit it for evil. Even in those cases it is never permissible to lie, even if you must exercise a mental reservation or suffer for remaining silent. But we often struggle with deciding whether someone needs to know and for this we can rely on the principle of communion. Will what I am about to tell lead to a communion of persons or destroy it? If I were to tell my neighbor that their babysitter is a drunk then that would be protective of the common good. If I were to tell the babysitter that my neighbor wears a pink tutu then it would not.
Before closing there is one further point that need to be made related to speech and rash judgment. Earlier I compared speech to downloading our thoughts. Speech can also be a means by which we govern our thoughts. When we speak it has the effect of solidifying our thoughts because there is now someone else who knows what I know. But when we keep the thoughts to ourselves, it has the effect of causing us to examine them more carefully and gives us time to offer a corrective. Speaking our thoughts sets them in stone. Silence leads to true thoughts.
Herein lies the promise of freedom when we learn to not just avoid lying, but use our speech well. It leads us out of the captivity of our minds and into the glorious freedom of seeing and loving the truth.