Guarding Your Tongue - Is "Honesty" the Best Policy?

What has happened to the sage advice, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all?" I grew up hearing that expression, meant to spare feelings and maintain relationships, didn't you? My mother was particularly adamant about it. Well, these days it seems like that wise admonition has been completely disregarded in favor of speaking your mind, no matter who is hurt or what relationships are ruined.

Today we're living in a world that is almost completely lacking in social graces. Manners have gone the way of quiet gentility - thrown out the proverbial window. And in favor of what? Brutal honesty? Which is, to my mind, simply an excuse for expressing any mean-spirited opinion one possesses, with no need to filter or moderate the hatefulness being spouted.

Over and over again, I'm hearing and reading statements such as - "I'm just being brutally honest. If that hurts your feelings, here's a Band-Aid." So, now it's not only okay to attack viciously and without conscience, but to blame the victim for being "too sensitive" if the attack causes them harm? I don't think so. In fact, I agree with Richard Needham who said, "People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than the honesty."

Frankly, I do not understand the appeal that proclaimed "honesty" has these days. Not only because that honesty tends to be simple brutality specifically aimed at particular targets, but also because that proclaimed "honesty" is actually personal opinion spun to resemble truth, and not truth at all. Just because a person says what he or she thinks and makes a claim of "being honesty" does not guarantee that there is any truth whatsoever in their statements, though many people assume that honesty and truth are synonymous.

Webster defines honesty as frank directness, and bluntness, in addition to integrity, morality, righteousness, goodness, truthfulness, and reliability. I say that there is much, much more of the first two definitions in most statements of honesty than any of the latter. Honesty these days is simply not what I grew up knowing honesty to be. Now its a tool to sway, or browbeat, others to your way of thinking and to belittle those who don't agree with your premise.

So, in this, I long for "The Good Old Days," when people valued thoughtfulness, kindness, and circumspectness in speech, and when they spoke to build bridges between people and not to tear them down. And I wonder just how far this brutal trend will go and how much damage it will ultimately do. It worries me.

Not to preach, but...we are warned, repeatedly, and not only by adages spouted by our elders, but by the Big Guy upstairs, to guard our tongues -

Proverbs 15:1- "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."

James 3: 5, 6 - " Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself on fire by hell." and

Ephesians 4: 29 - " Do not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."

So I say, in this, do as your mother told you.