Our Bible verse for today: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.” Colossians 4:6 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “Don’t slander the opposition”
I’m a fan of the nightly news show “Special Report: with Bret Baier” on the Fox news channel. His motto is “Fair, Balanced, and Unafraid”. I’ve tried watching nightly news shows on other networks but I’ve discovered them to be too biased in their reporting. I realize that Fox News has the reputation of having a conservative bias, but that’s mostly true of the opinion shows (which I don’t watch). I think Special Report really is fair and balanced. The other thing I appreciate about Brett and his panel of commentators is that they are respectful and temperate in their language. They don’t engage in overheated rhetoric or hyperbole, and they are not mean-spirited.
That’s an important point because the political conversation in our nation today is overwhelmingly mean, exaggerated, overheated, and filled with slanderous assertions that have no basis in fact. But it’s never okay for God’s people to engage in that kind of discourse. We are to be the adults in the room. That’s the point that Paul was making in Colossians 4:6. Our speech is to be gracious. It’s also to be seasoned with salt (truth and facts), but we are to do it in a calm, reasoned, and intellectual manner that shows respect for those who might disagree with us. We are not to be mocking and mean.
As we have been noting all month, environmentalism is a politically-charged issue in our society. The liberal left has highjacked the issue and made it one of their pet projects. Many conservative Christians have responded to that by thinking of creation care as a liberal political issue that we don’t want anything to do with. But creation care was a Biblical issue long before it was a political issue. It belonged to us, God’s people, long before it belonged to Greenpeace activists.
As the people of God we need to advocate for common sense approaches to creation care that balance our stewardship responsibility to care for our Father’s world, with the human factor that necessitates the use of the energy resources God has given to us. And we need to do it with graciousness and respect.
I encourage all of us to avoid slandering those with whom we disagree. State your case. Do it with facts and good reasoning. But don’t mock or slander those on the other side.
Oak Hill Baptist Church