Views on using words to detract

Backbiting, slandering and fault-finding for the purpose of

destroying a person’s reputation unjustly are considered major sins

in Islam. Islam always emphasizes a healthy social relationship among

members of society. Constructive criticism is accepted, however,

provided that it is not aimed at people’s personalities, but rather

to protect society from corruption and evil.

IMAM MOSTAFA AL-QAZWINI

Islamic Educational Center

of Orange County

It has been said that “great people talk about ideas, average

people talk about things, and small people talk about people.”

Indeed, when the heart is narrow, the tongue is wide.

Gossip, the Talmud teaches, is like a three-pronged tongue,

killing three people: the person about whom it is said, the person

who listens to it and the person who says it. Character

assassination, verbal violence, assaults on reputations, public and

private calumny abound in the political arena and in social circles.

While God created the universe through divine words, we can destroy

by human words.

Of the 44 sins Jewish people will enumerate in the prayer of

confession this coming Day of Atonement, 10 are sins of the tongue.

This disproportionate emphasis illustrates the seriousness with which

Judaism approaches the use of words as weapons. The innuendoes and

insinuations that are so much a part of human discourse serve only to

debase us. If only we spoke with the same knowledge we use when we

compose a telegram: we should know that as every word of a telegram

is counted and charged, so it is with every word we speak.

RABBI MARK MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

People might well say that the church communicates most frequently

by rumor, gossip and innuendo. Local pastors might better complain

that our people do not tell us all of what we need to know about them

and so we hope we get their news from others.

Telling people what they should know about others so that all

might be gracious, generous and helpful is usually good. It is

difficult to imagine a situation in which “mudslinging” could be

justifiable from Christian perspectives. “Mudslinging” at faith

communities in the form of “jokes” seems frequent in our society and

some of that “mud” sticks; one of the things I love about the

Episcopal Church is that we wash our dirty laundry in public!

Hebrew Scripture, such as Psalm 15:3 and 50:20-21 and Proverbs

10:19-21 and 30:10-11, provide support for Christian Scripture, which

puts “slander,” “gossip” and “abusive language” in the same category

as “wrath, malice, quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, conceit

and disorder” (2 Corinthians 12:20 and Colossians 3:8). Christians

are to tell “truth.” The “truth” we are to tell is clear in Jesus’

response to Pilate’s question in John 18:38, “What is truth?” Jesus

stands before earthly authority and power. He stands, and he stands

there.

THE VERY REV.’D CANON

PETER D. HAYNES

St. Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar