PARADOXICAL

Slander is Murder

In today's political climate, especially on social media where anonymity emboldens accusers of every stripe, people take slander lightly.

They think sworn statements, accusations, unfounded opinions, and wild speculations are just words. The truth is words are like bladed weapons, words are like guns. Words can hurt. In fact, slander is like murder. When accompanied by cursing, it is no different from witchcraft.

When you die, you will make an accounting of every malicious word you said, every lie you whispered and swore by, every false oath or false witness you made, every rash and unfair judgment you made, every gossip you peddled, every fake news you forwarded on purpose, every falsification knowingly dispensed, every accusation you invented to extort money from your target...

Look at yourself in the mirror. You will never be a good person if you resort to slander to win an election, an argument, or anything in life.

Almost all of us are seriously into faith, religion, spirituality, and yet we treat this misdemeanor ever so casually. I invite everyone to think about it for a second, and shudder at the enormity of what we have done and what we need to pay for in the afterlife with the careless words we have uttered.

"The Evils of Slander" -- this should be a top-priority seminar that everybody should be attending, yet nobody does.

Note that righteous speech is everyone's weak point -- the Christian teaching is hard to follow. Everyone is guilty to a certain degree. But that does not diminish the gravity of the offense of malicious speech.

What makes slander particularly evil is the utter difficulty or even implausibility of fully correcting a mistake once it is made. As someone far wiser once put it, "How can one possibly take back what one has spread into the four corners of the wind?"

Anyone who has been victimized by erroneous presumptions about oneself will appreciate the wisdom of avoiding wrongdoing through malicious speech.

Members of a decent society must strive towards propriety, or else the world turns into a swamp of lawlessness ruled only by an unrestrained, undisciplined, murderous tongue--an otherwise little instrument of speech capable of demolishing anything, from individual reputation to entire civilizations.

posted by Resty Odon  # 2:29 PM