The Words We Carry

There are some lessons from childhood that don’t make much sense when you’re young, but somehow they stay with you for the rest of your life. One of those lessons came from my mom.

Like most brothers and sisters, my siblings and I argued from time to time. One day, one of us called the other a “punk.” I honestly don’t remember whether I was the one who said it or the one it was said to. What I do remember is my mom stepping in before the argument went any further and asking a simple question.

“Do you know what that word means?”

Neither of us did. We had heard other kids use it, so we repeated it. To us, it was just another insult. My mom wasn’t interested in who had started the argument or who was winning it. She wanted us to think about the words we were using. Then she said something that has stayed with me for decades.

“If you don’t know what a word means, you shouldn’t be using it.”

At the time, it sounded like just another house rule. Looking back, I realize it became something much bigger. It quietly shaped the way I approached language.

From that point on, whenever I came across a word I didn’t know, I looked it up. If someone used a word I’d never heard before, I wanted to understand it. If I read a book and stumbled across unfamiliar vocabulary, I’d reach for a dictionary. Long before Google existed, I became the kid who wanted to know not just how to spell a word, but what it actually meant. My curiosity wasn’t driven by wanting to sound smarter. It was driven by a desire to know what I was actually saying. Looking back, I’m grateful for that habit because words are more than collections of letters. They carry meaning. They carry history. They carry emotion. Sometimes they even carry consequences. That lesson feels more relevant today than ever.

We live in a culture that is incredibly quick to assign labels. Someone disagrees with us, and before long they’re called racist, hateful, toxic, narcissistic, sexist, fascist, communist, thug, or any number of other things. Sometimes those descriptions are accurate. Often they aren’t. But whether they’re deserved or not, labels have a way of sticking.

Once a label is attached to someone, it often becomes the lens through which everything else about them is interpreted. People stop asking questions because they assume the label tells them everything they need to know. Instead of becoming the beginning of a conversation, it becomes the end of one. That’s why words matter. They aren’t simply sounds coming out of our mouths. They shape how we understand people, situations, and even ourselves.

Scripture has a great deal to say about the power of our speech. Proverbs tells us that “death and life are in the power of the tongue.” James compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship and a tiny spark capable of setting an entire forest ablaze. Paul reminds believers to use words that build others up according to their needs. The Bible never suggests that we should avoid speaking the truth. Followers of Christ are called to speak truth, but Scripture also calls us to speak with wisdom, grace, humility, and love. Truth and thoughtfulness were never meant to compete with one another.

As I’ve reflected on that lesson from my childhood, I’ve begun to wonder if we’ve become so accustomed to repeating words we’ve heard from someone else that we’ve forgotten to ask what those words actually mean. We borrow language from headlines, social media, podcasts, political commentators, and even people we respect without taking the time to understand the definitions behind the words we’re repeating. Sometimes we inherit opinions wrapped in vocabulary we’ve never really examined.

James tells us to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” I’ve always understood that as a reminder to be patient, but I wonder if part of being slow to speak is taking the time to understand before we begin to define, accuse, or label someone else.

“Respecting people begins with respecting the words we use to describe them.”

Words are gifts from God. They allow us to encourage, teach, comfort, correct, persuade, confess, forgive, and proclaim the gospel. Yet those same words can also wound, misrepresent, divide, discourage, and destroy. The difference often comes down to whether we’ve taken the time to understand the words we’re using before they leave our mouths.

Maybe that’s a question worth asking more often.

Before I repeat this word… Before I attach this label… Before I describe this person…

Do I actually know what this word means?

Looking back, I don’t think my mom was trying to improve our vocabulary. She was trying to shape our character. She understood something I wouldn’t fully appreciate until much later in life. People deserve more than being reduced to words we don’t even understand. Our words have the power to build bridges or erect walls, to clarify truth or create confusion, to reflect the character of Christ or simply echo the noise around us.

Maybe the next time we’re tempted to repeat a word we’ve heard, assign a label to someone, or describe another person with a term that carries more weight than we realize, we should pause long enough to ask what my mom asked all those years ago.

“Do you know what that word means?”

It’s a simple question.

But it just might change the conversation.

…just a thought.