Straight Walk - Clean Talk

DateLine (9/6/06 – Ponce, Puerto Rico)

I use to work for an engineering company whose marketing tagline was “We Do What We Say.” It’s important in the Consulting Engineering business to present yourself as an honest and dependable service provider. We used to joke internally that the slogan was the reason that we didn’t say very much. The point being if you don’t say much you don’t have to do much. The truth is that the secular business world places a high value on being a person of your word.

Though normally not formally codified, there is a certain way of speaking that is understood to be a part of the Christian life. There is no “list” of words that are forbidden to be uttered by Christians but the expectation is that Christians do talk different. I heard a preacher onetime make the statement that Christians should “walk right, talk right, look right, and spit white.” The “spit white” part was an admonition to refrain from the use of chewing tobacco.

Jesus himself taught us the value of “straight-talk” in the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5, “. . .let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” The implication is that it should not be necessary for the Christian to add force to our verbal commitments or statement s by the addition of expletives or vulgarities. Our history with people should be that when we say something it can be in a manner that is straight forward and simple because our reputation is the force behind the statement.

In a similar way the Apostle Paul emphasized the importance of the Christian walk, "you [should] walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in knowledge of God." Colossians 1:10. It is relatively easy to clean up the “exterior” of our lives and for all appearances to those that we come in contact with things appear to be in order. Jesus warns the Pharisees in Matt. 23:27 about cleanup of the exteriors with no corresponding cleanup of the interior, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.” It is a powerful dynamic when a “straight walk” converges with “clean talk.”

Remember, you are what you say, you say what you are.