Tongue

Professional golfer Ryan McCormick went to extreme lengths to tame his tongue during the recent Club Car Championship in early April. The hot-headed New Jersey native has been looking for ways to keep his composure during golf events. So during the tournament's second round April 4, McCormick taped his mouth shut. "Been having not-so-fun times this year on the golf course. Pretty angry and mad," McCormick said in a social media video post by the Korn Ferry Tour. "I've tried a lot of things, and I figured I'd just shut myself up."

Now here's an interesting take on the need for gratitude (aside from the hundreds of biblical injunctions of course). The magazine Inc. ran an article titled "Listening to Complainers Is Bad for Your Brain." Apparently neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session. And the news isn't good.

The article summarizes the research:

"Being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity—including viewing such material on TV—actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving. Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

Possible Preaching Angle:
So, basically, too much complaining (either listening to it or dishing it out) turns your brain to mush. The article provides three practical steps to avoid that negative, brain-numbing experience of complaining, but that advice can't top the Bible's simple command: "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18).

New research analyzing nearly 2 billion words from websites across 20 English-speaking countries reveals that Americans lead the pack in online profanity, outswearing even the Brits and Australians by a significant margin.

The findings flip common stereotypes on their head. While we might expect foul-mouthed Aussies or pub-going Brits to claim the digital cursing crown, it’s actually Americans who dominate online vulgarity.

Researchers noted in their study that “The United States, often associated with protestant puritanism, Christian fervor, and prudishness, show the highest rates of vulgarity in online discourse, followed by Great Britain.”

Online anonymity and informal communication styles enable this linguistic freedom. Unlike face-to-face conversations constrained by social hierarchies and formal expectations, digital spaces often feel like consequence-free zones for verbal expression.

Despite common perceptions that Australians are the most profane English speakers —Americans claim the digital crown for creative cursing. Americans apparently reserve their strongest expressions for online spaces where they feel freer to let loose.

A reporter for Business Insider writes:

Recently, my family group chat buzzed when I asked if we should say "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT when making requests. My mother, always polite, insisted on using manners with AI to "keep myself human."

As AI like ChatGPT becomes part of daily life, our interactions with these tools are shaping new social norms. Digital etiquette expert Elaine Swann notes that, just as we've adapted to new technology—like knowing not to take phone calls on speaker in public—we're still figuring out how to treat AI bots.

Kelsey Vlamis, another Business Insider reporter, noticed this shift personally. While vacationing in Italy, her husband had to stop himself from interrupting their tour guide with rapid-fire questions, realizing that’s how he interacts with ChatGPT but not with people. "That is not, in fact, how we talk to human beings," Vlamis said.

Swann emphasizes that maintaining respect in all interactions—human or digital—is important. After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed on X that it costs "tens of millions of dollars" to process polite phrases like "please" and "thank you" sent to ChatGPT, Swann argued that it’s up to companies to make this more efficient, not for users to drop politeness.

"This is the world that we create for ourselves," Swann said. "And AI should also understand that this is how we speak to one another, because we're teaching it to give that back to us."

Altman, for his part, believes the expense is justified, saying the money spent on polite requests to ChatGPT is money "well spent."

As we navigate this new era, how we interact with AI may shape not just our technology, but our humanity as well.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story about politeness toward AI can be used to illustrate several Biblical themes, such as human dignity, respectful communication, and ethical responsibility. 1) Kindness – Making kindness a habit reflects the nature of God (Eph. 4:32); 2) Human nature – The mother’s desire to “keep myself human” through politeness reflects the imperative of Col. 3:12 “Clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” 3) Respect for others - The husband’s struggle to avoid ChatGPT-style interruptions with his tour guide highlights the tension between efficiency and humility (Phil. 2:3-4).

When children are exposed to violence on TV and in video games, studies show they tend to become more aggressive themselves. But a study reveals that even just exposure to swear words in media may lead children to become more physically aggressive as well.

In a study involving middle-schoolers in Missouri, researchers asked the students about their exposure to profanity in the media — in particular on television and in video games — as well as their attitudes about swear words and their tendencies toward aggressive behavior. The scientists measured both physical aggression (by asking students whether they hit, kicked, or punched others) and relational aggression (by asking them whether they gossiped about others to damage their reputations).

The researchers calculated that exposure to profanity had about the same relationship to aggressive behavior as exposure to violence on TV or in video games. In addition, they found that the more children were exposed to profanity, they more likely they were to use swear words themselves, and those who used profanity were more likely to become aggressive toward others. Study leader Sarah Coyne said:

From using profanity to aggressive behavior, it was a pretty strong correlation. And these are not even the worst [profane] words that kids are exposed to, since there are seven dirty words that you’re not allowed to say on TV. So, we’re seeing that even exposure to lower forms of profanity are having an effect on behavior.

While bullying behavior was not specifically addressed in the study, children who are more aggressive are known to be more likely to bully. So, controlling youngsters’ exposure to profanity may be one way to stem the tide of bullying among teens.

In November 2019, Coldplay released their eighth album, Everyday Life. In twenty years of professional music, it was the first time that any of Coldplay’s records came with the famous “Parental Advisory” sticker. The whole of the album’s profanity came from three seemingly random “f-bombs.” Not only had Coldplay never had an explicit content warning on any album before. They had never even featured a single profanity on any of their full-length LPs before Everyday Life.

Less than a year later, Taylor Swift released Folklore. The same exact thing happened. Despite a 15+ year history of recording that featured zero strong profanity, Folklore earned the black and white sticker for featuring multiple uses of the f-word. This started a trend for Swift: Every album released since has the same profanity and the same explicit content warning (as is common in the industry, the albums each have a “clean” version that edits out the harshest words).

Both Coldplay and Taylor Swift have historically appealed to a younger, more sensitive demographic. They have a long and successful history of selling their music without profanity.

Tech writer Samuel D. Jones offers the following observations on the use of profanity by Coldplay, Swift, and other artists:

We live in an era where the combination of authenticity and vice means that we are seeing some examples of performative offense. Performative offense is what happens when people indulge in vice less out of a sincere desire to indulge it, and more out of a desire to sell their image in the public square. It’s because many modern Americans now associate vice with authentic lives that leaders and those who aspire to leadership may flaunt vulgar or antisocial behavior on the grounds that such things make them “real” to the masses.

In other words, it’s cool to be bad. It’s cool to sin a little.

For decades, a social psychologist named John Bargh has conducted studies on the way words affect behavior. In one such study, undergraduate students were given a scrambled-sentence test. One version of the test was sprinkled with rude words like “disturb,” “bother,” and “intrude.” Another version was sprinkled with polite words like “respect,” “considerate,” and “yield.” The subjects thought they were taking tests measuring lan­guage ability, but they were actually being subconsciously primed by those words.

Priming is a psychological phenomenon related to stimulus and response, and words are the lead actors. The word “nurse” is recognized more quickly if it’s preceded by the word “doctor.” The same goes for “dog” and “wolf.” Why? These words are semantic primes that cause you to think in categories. If I say Empire State Building, it puts you in a New York state of mind. In the same sense, the word “please” is a politeness prime.

After taking the five-minute scrambled-sentence test, stu­dents were supposed to walk down the hall and talk to the person running the experiment about their next assignment. However, an actor was strategically engaged in conversation with the researcher when the students arrived. The goal? Psychologist Bargh wanted to see whether the subjects who were primed with polite words would wait longer before interrupting than those who were primed with rude words.

The result? Sixty-five percent of the group primed with rude words interrupted the conversation. Those primed with polite words? Eighty-two percent of them never interrupted at all. If the test hadn't timed out at ten minutes, who knows how long they would have waited?

Possible Preaching Angle:

A few polite words. What difference do they make? In quantitative terms, they can make a 47% difference. Don’t underestimate the power of polite words.

These days, just turning on the television seems to trigger a blitzkrieg of F-bombs.

“We’re seeing a big spike in the use of crude and profane language in movies and TV shows,” says Chad Michael, CEO of EnjoyMoviesYourWay.com, a content-filtering service for smart TVs. He adds, “As it increases, we become numb to it. And that gives writers and media [outlets] permission to add even more.”

Engineers at EnjoyMoviesYourWay.com deploy artificial intelligence to identify crude language in programming, allowing the app to filter thousands of titles. In an analysis for The Wall Street Journal, Enjoy scanned over 60,000 popular movies and TV shows released since 1985 and tracked the usage of bleepable words over time.

In the analysis, usage of the F-word went from 511 in 1985 to 22,177 through early November 2023. The S-word went from 484 in 1985 to 10,864 into November 2023. Of course, the explosion in expletives is also partly due to the sheer volume of programming that’s now available to viewers.

In his Hall of Fame speech, Brett Favre told a story that he had never shared publicly:

One more thing about my father, and this is something I've never told anyone. My dad was my high school football coach. He was the head football coach, and he coached me and my two brothers. But I never had a car growing up and I always rode to and from school with my father in his truck. So, he was always the last to leave the building because he had to turn the lights off, lock up, and then we made our way home.

So, it was the last high school football game of my high school career. Although I don't remember how I played in the last game, what I do remember is sitting outside the coach's office, waiting for my father to come out so we could leave. It was dark. And I overheard my father talking to the three other coaches. I heard him -- and I assume I didn't play as well the previous week only because of what he said. He said: ‘I can assure you one thing about my son; he will play better. He will redeem himself. I know my son. He has it in him.’

And I never let him know that I heard that. I never said that to anyone else. But I thought to myself: That's a pretty good compliment, you know? My chest kind of swelled up. But I never forgot that statement and that comment that he made to those other coaches. And I want you to know, Dad, I spent the rest of my career trying to redeem myself.

I'm working on it. I'm trying to get through it. But I spent the rest of my career trying to redeem myself and make him proud, and I hope I succeeded.

Possible Preaching Angle:

For better or for worse, our words are self-fulfilling prophecies. Are you giving people, especially your children, something to live up to or something to live down to? Are your words life-giving? Or do they suck the life out of others? Are your words encouraging or discouraging?

Because the British royal family lives under constant media scrutiny, it’s usual for any member of the family to stay out of the limelight for an extended period. So, when Catherine of Wales hadn’t been seen in public for months, and her Mother’s Day photo was scrutinized as possibly being doctored, conspiracy theories began to proliferate.

All these theories proved to be irresistible for online jokesters. “Perhaps Kate Middleton had been using a body double, or was in a coma, or was engaged in an illicit tryst,” people speculated online. Even American late night comedy hosts were getting in on the action.

But it turns out the truth was much less exciting, and much scarier: Kate Middleton was undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a form of cancer.

For many people, this news created a regretful reckoning. A 58-year-old woman named Dana spoke to reporters at The Washington Post about this. Dana had been joking with her friends about the Kate Middleton rumors; when she heard the truth, she was filled regret. She said, “This woman’s sick and afraid. And I just lost my mom to cancer. I am devastated at my inhumanity.”

Many of the online entertainment personalities simply ceased joking and moved on to other targets, but CBS’ late-night host took an extra step, apologizing during a segment of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He said:

There’s a standard that I try to hold myself to. And that is I do not make light of somebody else’s tragedy. Any cancer diagnosis is harrowing for the patient and for their family. Though I’m sure they don’t need it from me, I and everyone here at The Late Show would like to extend our well wishes and heartfelt hope that her recovery is swift and thorough.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Telling jokes can be a great way to bring levity to your friends, but take care that your jokes do not veer into harassment or defamation of character.

U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee recently expressed remorse for her words after an unverified audio recording of her was released to the public. Jackson Lee, who is running for mayor of Houston, was recorded chastising an unnamed staffer with an abusive tone that included several instances of profanity.

The woman in the recording, who sounds like Jackson Lee, said, “I want you to have a (expletive) brain. I want you to have read it. I want you to say, ’Congresswoman, it was such and such date. That’s what I want. That’s the kind of staff that I want to have.” In the recording she’s also heard describing another staffer as a “fat (expletive) idiot.”

While neither confirming nor denying the authenticity of recording, Jackson Lee maintained her desire to treat all her staff members with dignity and respect, and acknowledged that because of her eagerness to effectively serve her constituents, she occasionally falls short of her own standard of conduct.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those entrusted with positions of authority and responsibility have an obligation to watch what they say. Leaders and public servants need to use words to build up, not to tear down with insults or profanity.

Of all the helping professions, police work seems the most suited to a dark, sardonic disposition often referred to as gallows humor. It’s the byproduct of being subject to crime, degradation, and violence on a day-to-day basis. Still, the case of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer should help officers reflect on the consequences of their words, especially when they’re caught on camera.

Auderer’s bodycam footage recorded him joking with another officer while discussing the death of a pedestrian. SPD officer Kevin Dave had been driving over 70 miles per hour in his police vehicle while responding to an overdose call when his car struck and killed 26-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk. Auderer had been summoned to evaluate whether Dave had been impaired at the time of the accident. Auderer was recorded saying that the city should “just write a check,” and implied that eleven thousand dollars would suffice, because, “she was 26, anyway … she had limited value.”

Auderer later wrote in a statement to the city’s Office of Police Accountability, "I intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers. I laughed at the ridiculousness of how these incidents are litigated and the ridiculousness of how I watched these incidents play out as two parties bargain over a tragedy."

Auderer admitted that anyone listening to his side of the conversation alone "would rightfully believe I was being insensitive to the loss of human life." The comment was "not made with malice or a hard heart," he said, but "quite the opposite." Still, police watchdog groups were not satisfied with the explanation, and several demanded Auderer be suspended without pay.

At the time of her death, Kandula was a student enrolled in the information systems program at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus. After her death, her uncle Ashok Mandula arranged to send her body to her mother in India. Mandula said, "The family has nothing to say. Except I wonder if these men's daughters or granddaughters have value. A life is a life."

You've never heard of Tanuja Ghale. She's a fellow believer, salon owner, and evangelist in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. One day she saw a young woman on the streets of that city and told her she was beautiful. Inexplicably, the woman began to weep. That morning, her husband had beaten her and told her she was, "… the worst woman in the world."

When Tanuja tells women they're beautiful, they're shocked, and want to know what beauty she sees in them that their loved ones have missed. Then those women may be ready to hear that God loves them unconditionally. Our words can have such a profound positive (or negative!) impact.

An often-overlooked effect of missionary influence has been the preservation of languages. Language is the breath of a culture, and so the death of a language almost always results in the loss of a way of life. MIT linguist Norvin Richards expressed the importance of the preservation of languages and cultures well: “There are jokes that are only funny in Maliseet and there are songs that are only beautiful in Wôpanâak …. If we lose those languages, we lose little pieces of the beauty and richness of the world.”

In 2019, the United Nations warned, “Almost half the world’s estimated 6,700 languages are in danger of disappearing.” Many minority languages are lost when younger generations are educated in national languages. Written languages have a much better chance of survival than exclusively oral ones and many small, unique languages have been preserved by Bible translation.

In one remarkable case, the Wôpanâak language was brought back to life a hundred years after its last speakers died. The linguistic revival was based on the translation work of missionary John Eliot. The first Bible published in colonial America was in the Wôpanâak language in 1663. As a result of Eliot’s literacy efforts, the Wampanoag tribe left behind a collection of written documents when disease ravaged their population.

In the 1990s, Jessie Little Doe Baird, a descendant of the tribe Eliot sought to reach, used those records to revive the Wôpanâak language as part of a linguistics program at MIT. Her daughter is the first native Wôpanâak speaker in seven generations and six other Wampanoags have become fluent in the language. Interestingly, one of Baird’s Wampanoag ancestors publicly opposed missionary work in the eighteenth century.

From 2015 through mid-2022, Jeffrey Kriv received 51 tickets, but paid only two. Kriv had become adept at beating his tickets in court by telling a particular story explaining his behavior. An investigation by Pro Publica found three specific recent examples:

• “Well, that morning, I broke up with my girlfriend and she stole my car,” said Kriv in January 2021, after being spotted running a red light.
• “Yeah, I broke up with my girlfriend earlier that morning, had a knock-down, drag-out fight, verbally, of course. She took my car without my knowledge,” he told a different judge when fighting a speeding ticket in August 2021.
• “I broke up with my girlfriend that day and she took my car without my knowledge,” said Kriv again in May 2022 while contesting another speeding ticket. “I didn’t get my car back for like three days. But it was her driving the car.”

Pro Publica found that he told a version of this story on at least 44 different occasions, without letting on that he himself worked as an officer for the Chicago Police Department. Kriv was repeatedly reprimanded for misconduct while on the job, including complaints filed by fellow officers. Prosecutors have charged Kriv with four counts of perjury and five counts of forgery. All counts are felonies and are for allegedly lying to judges under oath and providing fictitious police reports.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we deceive others over a long period, we also deceive ourselves into thinking there will be no consequences for our behavior. But that too is a lie. Deeds done in darkness will eventually be exposed to light.

In Fall 2022, the Gas app exploded in popularity among high schoolers, but a vicious, unfounded rumor caused its popularity to nosedive, confounding its founders in the process.

Titled after the internet slang “gas up” which means to flatter someone or give them good feelings, the app allows students to share anonymous compliments with their peers. But mere weeks after it reached No. 1 on the Apple store, rumors began circulating that Gas was being used for sex trafficking.

One user said, “I have a Glock and I’ll come into your house and kill all of you,” said Nikita Bier, the startup entrepreneur who founded Gas. “The messages are very detailed, and they’ll send like 150 of these messages because they’re so angry. We have had emails saying, ‘what you’re doing is disgusting and I’ve reported you to the FBI.’ We get countless messages every day from users about it.”

According to Bier, the rumors intensified after parents, teachers, news reporters, and public safety organizations amplified them without knowing if they were true or not.

One such agency was the police department in Piedmont, Oklahoma, which later had to post a retraction. Piedmont Police Chief Scott Singer later said, “That posting was the result of a post that was forwarded to us, which we later learned to be a bogus posting. As a result, we talked with the CEO of Gas, and we have determined it was a bogus posting. We have removed that from our Facebook page and informed the schools that any postings about that were discovered to be false.”

Bier says, “The app grows on its own, but dealing with the hoax requires a lot of labor.” He’s tried a variety of strategies to counter the misinformation, but it seems none of them are very effective. “The challenge is that you can only fight memes with memes. If it’s not easily screenshotable and exciting it’s not going to get more visibility than the original message.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Nothing can ruin a good situation like poor judgment and unbridled gossiping. As Christians we ought to set an example both by what we say and what we choose NOT to say.

A playground scene turned tragic after a woman was shot and killed after a basketball game. Cameron Hogg, 31, is facing murder charges in connection to the shooting of Asia Womack, 21. Womack had recently defeated Hogg in pickup basketball, and witnesses say the game was heated and that there was plenty of trash talk on the court. Later that day, Hogg drove his truck to another location where Womack and another friend were seated outside, watching a football game on TV. When Hogg got out of his truck, Womack stood up, ready for another confrontation. But instead of saying a word, Hogg pulled out a firearm and shot her four times.

Her mother Andrea lamented the killing, noting that the two had been friends. She said, ”He’d pull up to my house, pick her up. They’d ride together, eat food together, take his phone calls, give him money in jail, and you turn around and kill her? It was senseless for him to kill his friend over a basketball game … Not even the basketball game itself, but the words that were spoken after the game."

After witnesses identified Hogg in a photo lineup, police arrested him without incident.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Society is witnessing increasing acts of spontaneous rage and extreme violence. This highlights the words of Scripture which describes that “the works of the flesh are evident…strife, jealousy, fits of anger” (Gal. 5:19-21) and confirms that “in the last days terrible times will come. For men will be abusive … unloving, unforgiving … without self-control … brutal” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

Football scout Chris Prescott was let go from his scouting position for the Chicago Bears after a quote from one of his media appearances went viral. "He’s a – what would we call it? – Ph.D.? Poor, hungry and desperate. Football is his life. This is this kid’s life. There’s a lot to like about that when you see a guy who’s so passionate about football.”

Prescott was referring to Bears draft pick Jaquan Brisker, a defensive back out of Penn State. Prescott meant it as a compliment, saying afterwards, "it’s how he communicates … you feel a tough, hard-nosed kid."

After his words were quoted on Twitter, an outcry of criticism welled up from people who felt that Prescott’s words were unnecessarily insensitive, bordering on dehumanizing. Mike Freeman of USA Today said, “If Prescott talks about players like this publicly, imagine what he says when out of view.” Freeman, who is African American, says that Prescott and other white NFL staffers and media members often communicate in ways that unintentionally devalue the humanity NFL football players, most of whom are Black.

Freeman said, “There's still a significant swath of the league that sees players as cattle, or worse, as things. What I'm about to say isn't specifically about Prescott. It's more of a general statement. Parts of the NFL see players as things that may have some elements of humanity, but not quite; somewhere between a robot and a shell of a man.”

Many current and former NFL players agree. Seattle Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin says there are times when he feels like “a zoo animal”:

I don’t know how to put this, but to some people, the NFL is basically modern-day slavery. Don’t get me wrong, we get paid a lot of money. There’s a sense of “shut up and play,” that this is entertainment for other people. Then, when we go out in public, we’re like zoo animals. We’re not human beings. I can’t go to the grocery store and just buy groceries like a normal person. It becomes an issue, a burden and so . . . I haven’t checked my mail in a while.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we recognize the inherent dignity in everyone, we show them the respect that God intends for everyone.

The late pastor and writer Eugene Peterson once told a story about walking in Yellowstone Park with his wife and three children. Peterson wrote:

As my family and I were walking in a mountain meadow in Yellowstone Park, there was a little boy of four or five about 30 yards out in the meadow picking exquisite alpine flowers. It is against the rules to pick flowers in national parks. I was outraged. I yelled at him, “Don’t pick the flowers.” He just stood wide-eyed, innocent and terrified. He dropped the flowers and started crying.

You can imagine what happened next. My wife and children, my children especially, were all over me. “Daddy, what you did was far worse than what he did! He was just picking a few flowers and you yelled, you scared him. You ruined him. He is probably going to have to go for counseling when he’s 40 years old.” My children were right. You cannot yell people into holiness. You cannot terrify people into the sacred. My yelling was a far worse violation of the holy place than his picking a few flowers. Later I had plenty of opportunity to reflect on this, reminded, as I frequently was, by my children.

I do that a lot, bluster and yell on behalf of God‘s holy presence, instead of taking off my shoes myself, kneeling on holy ground, and inviting whoever happens to be around to join with me.

He added, “If we begin by formulating a problem, by identifying a need, by tackling a necessary job, by launching a program, we reduce the reality that is before us to what we can do or get others to do.” Peterson concludes that everything we do in the Christian life must begin with adoration, with a sense of wonder, and with worship.