My daughters love to read books aloud as they ride in the car, which is a wonderfully productive use of the great amount of time we spend on the road. I thoroughly enjoy hearing them improve in their reading skills, and I am often intrigued by their book choices and reviews. Reading in the car frequently leads to some noteworthy and thought-provoking discussions with my girls.
Over the weekend, my older daughter and I had one of these interesting discussions pertaining to a few lines in The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. The book is written from the perspective of a gorilla who lives enclosed in a shopping mall zoo. While people observe him through his glass enclosure, Ivan observes them as well and makes a few remarkable conclusions. For example, he says, “Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot.”
This description of how we sometimes throw out our words like trash is quite convicting. How many times do we dispose of unnecessary words that lead not only to our own rotting guilt but also – and more importantly – to the deterioration of our hearer’s dignity and well-being? You’ve seen the cartoons. Characters slip on banana peels! Why would we want to make others fall with our wasteful, discarded words?
A couple of pages later, Ivan the gorilla makes yet another notable observation as he laments, “Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say.” What an appropriately succinct description of our noisy culture! We have become so afraid of silence that we prefer either to listen to or contribute to empty, unfiltered, and unvetted noise rather than to hear or say nothing at all. This reality is tragic. It takes a moment of silence to figure out what should or should not be said. When we do not take a moment of silent contemplation, we risk dumping more garbage into the already decaying landfill of irresponsible words.
In spoken conversations and on social media, we must overcome our fear of silence in order to realize we do not have to fill every moment with someone else’s or our own opinions. Instead of making sure everyone knows what we think about every little thing, why not “let [our] reasonableness be known to everyone” (Philippians 4:5a)? “Reasonableness” here can also be translated as gentleness, graciousness, or moderation. It comes from a Greek word that combines the terms “appropriate” and “mild,” and it is the antithesis of what we see modeled in our world today. It is okay not to give a response right away, and it is okay not to respond at all. Silence doesn’t sell, nor is it entertaining; however, it can save us from a world of trouble. Carefully considered words spoken at the right time are life-giving. Hasty, knee-jerk reactions are usually destructive. I have witnessed too much of the latter in recent days. Christians, we can and should do better.
Are there times to speak out? Absolutely. Are there times to be silent? By all means. Are there times when we have no idea what to say or not say? You bet. We need reasonableness, gentleness, graciousness, and moderation to know when and how to speak. These attributes are possible because “the Lord is at hand” (Philippians 4:5b). He gives us the discernment to know what to say and when to say it, and he wants us to be known for our reasonableness. We cannot be known for our reasonableness if we blend in with the world’s tossing of words like banana peels. Watch your words, and watch your step.
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