Leaders, Know When to Hold Your Tongue

Proverbs 17: A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered. Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.

Zechariah 8:16  These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts;...

I am sure we can all remember the times when we have led or attended meetings, and after further review, felt we should or should not have said something in that meeting. Maybe something we said hit a nerve with someone, or maybe a key point we should have uttered might have helped. After the further review of what we might feel as failures, I suggest that the underlying cause of both of these kinds of "failures" are created by fear, ... the fear that if we do say something it might lead to more stress, or if we do not speak some truth the road that is being traveled will be very bumpy. Most of us are just not sure, if we release it to speak,  what our tongue will actually do. Is the tongue's default good or evil?



The tongue is a hard limb to tame. It wants to go it own way. James 3:8 says, "but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison".  Sounds like the default is evil. Yet James points out that this restless limb of ours is the same limb whereby we profess and praise our Savior. I wonder why the creator of the universe would accept the believer's testimony spoken from such a source of restless evil?

If no one can tame the tongue, then maybe we should all keep our mouth shut all the time? ... Never say a challenging word to one another? Hm... that is not what our second scripture verse says, does it?  On the contrary, this verse emphasizes the need not only to speak but to remain accurate with the truth, as if you are in court all the time. Have you ever embellished the truth to make a point? Have you ever stretched the truth in retaliation for what someone else said against you? Friends, in those cases we need to hold back or just hold our tongue.

What about another problem with speaking truth. How about repeating the truth too many times? Many years ago I was ministering with a colleague that I respect immensely when we got into a debate about a budget matter. Since I felt he was a weaker in financial matters I continued to debate him until he became exhausted with me and said. "OK Ron, you don' t have to hammer it home". Interestingly, even though that was over 10 years ago, I never forgot those words he said to me. I know in reality my debate that I enjoy so much can become overbearing for some and I need to be more sensitive to others. I also know that there is a fine line between the spoken truth that could overlap into others sensing judgement instead of truth. Let us bath the truth with sensitivity.

Friends, the most important principle of the tongue is restraint ... but only to a point. Just because, as our scripture states, you may look wise in the eyes of men for keeping silent, a more complete examination of the text might also reveal that silence does not always reveal the wise man, ... the text says he will only appear to be wise ... when he was really a fool for not speaking up.

We must speak the truth when we must. However, let us be very careful.

Don't be silent, just know when to hold your tongue.