To hurt or to heal?

It hardly seems possible that it’s not too long now before I am due to reach my 60^th birthday.  Where have all the years gone?  “Time flies” as the saying goes.  As I ponder what society was like in my childhood, it seems in so many ways to be light years away from where we are today.  Some aspects of modern society could hardly have been imagined back in the mid-1950s.

One of the significant elements of modern life is the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook etc.  For many, the use of social media has become a vital part of everyday life, and an important means of communication.  Of course there are inherent dangers of which we do need to be aware, and there are many instances of social media being abused and causing real harm.  On the other hand, it can be used in positive ways.  Social media is not harmful in itself, its effects depend on how it is used.  It’s about choice.

Of course I am a user of social media myself.  One of the things I like to do is to tweet short sayings or phrases which I come across which I find helpful or thought-provoking.  A saying which I came across recently was the following from Louie Giglio:

‘Words are free. You can freely build others at no cost to you. Or freely tear them down at great cost to them. Speak well.’

A great point made well.  The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me” is, as we all know, absolute rubbish.  Bones will mend in due course, but the immense damage which words can cause sometimes takes a very long time to heal.  The writer of the Biblical book of Proverbs tells us, ‘What you say can preserve life or destroy it; so you must accept the consequences of your words’ (Proverbs 18:21).

Do we choose to build people up or to tear them down?  Do we use our words to encourage or to discourage?  It’s not always easy to keep our tongue under control (I know that I fail at times), but how much better the world would be if more of us made an effort to do so.