Words of Wisdom - Part 4

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. On the lips of him who has understanding, wisdom is found, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks sense. When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. The tongue of the righteous is choice silver; the heart of the wicked is of little worth. The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of sense. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut off. The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse. (Proverbs 10:11,13,19-21,31-32 ESV). We would all cringe at the thought of a mouth full of gravel. Think of the pain and discomfort! But a stone in the mouth can actually be desirable at least that seems to be true for the cranes that inhabit the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey. These cranes tend to cackle a lot, especially while flying. All that noise gets the attention of eagles, which swoop down and seize them for a meal. The experienced cranes avoid this threat by picking up stones large enough to fill their mouths. This prevents them from cackling and from becoming lunch for the eagles. It is no wonder that the writer of Proverbs spends a lot of time teaching the importance of controlling our speech. In this part of our series on Words of Wisdom, another contemporary proverb comes to my mind: You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. There are times to speak and there are times to put a stone in your mouth. This is especially true in our marriages. In order to uncover the processes that destroy unions, marital researchers study couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retrace the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day. What they are discovering is interesting. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple’s durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple say they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won’t look remarkably similar in the early days. Yet when psychologists Cliff Notarius of Catholic University and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were put-downs. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. “Hostile put-downs act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time,” says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book We Can Work It Out. “In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can’t get through a week without major blowups.” You might have heard it said, “Put a sock in it!” Well, maybe not a sock, but a rock might not hurt at all. Be careful when and how you chose your battles with words. Some just aren’t worth the fight.