Charles Pogue
When I was a boy my family lived in a house with a wastewater drainage system that worked as follows. Outside the kitchen window was a grease trap which caught the water from the drained kitchen sink. From there, it sort of siphoned water into the septic tank with all the waste from the bathrooms. A pipe from the septic tank led to a small long open trench behind the backyard in a small pasture-like area we referred to as a trap. By the time the wastewater arrived in the trench it was filthy and on days when the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, in the house was not a comfortable place to be. That trench stank!
One day, my older brother was riding a horse around the trap. Not watching where he was going he rode the horse right into the trench. Thankfully the horse was not injured when she tripped and fell, but my brother landed hands and chest first into the stinky water of the fifty-foot trench. Let me tell you, no one wanted to be around him. We had to wash him off with a water hose before Momma would let him into the house to take a bath. The smell of my brother after his fall reminds me of how the cesspool mouths of so many in America are becoming increasingly dirty these days.
While it is true many politicians in the past, like other immoral people, including some who claim to be religious have had dirty mouths, a growing number of those politicians are becoming increasingly foul-mouthed in their public speech. The profanity-laced diatribe of a newly elected congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan against the president is a perfect example. This does not for a moment excuse the president who also has a filthy mouth, but this woman showed the increasing need for so many people to have their mouths washed out with the proverbial soap.
In Colossians 4:6, Paul instructed, “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt.” In chapter three, he wrote for them to put away filthy communication out of their mouths (v. 8).
James has much to say about the tongue. It is a fire. It is full of deadly poison. It is a small member of our physical bodies, but what a fire it kindles! (cf. James 1 and 3). No one can break the tongue like one does a horse, but it can, and must, be bridled like the horse is bridled that it may be controlled (James 1:26).
The loose filthy tongue is not only a sad thing in and of itself, but it is also a testimonial to the additional corruptness in the lives of people. It is not only no big concern to the masses when a woman has a baby out of wedlock, but it is something to adore. How do we know that? The unrighteous, immoral masses say so with their words.
Jesus stated the result of our words in the Gospel account of Mathew. “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matt. 12:36-37). Words say a lot about people and what they are saying about many of our citizens and, sadly, about some members of the Lord’s church is awful indeed. America is lying in the ditch filled with dirty water from the grease trap and the septic tank. Mouths are telling the sad story that America is growing into a larger and larger Cesspool!
