Taming the Hive Tongue

I was reading James 3 last night, and for the first time noticed that the passage regarding taming the tongue is immediately preceded by a warning to teachers that they will be judged more harshly. It still seems the tongue passage is a general warning to everyone, teacher or not, but I think it’s no accident that the two are next to each other.

It’s interesting to think about the influence of “teachers” in our present context. A hundred years ago, the local preacher and perhaps some well-known traveling personalities were the de facto teachers and held tremendous sway in Christian thinking. Then came the editors of the newsletters (I’m speaking primarily of the Church of Christ fellowship), university lecture series, radio and eventually a few TV programs.

Today, many churches have multiple paid staff and a number of educated lay members who also teach. Add to that the sizable Christian publishing industry, the Christian music industry, entire TV networks and any yahoo who wants to start his own blog and holy mackerel. We’ve got bonfires of tongues.

With all the content, we’ve had to change the way we digest it — or skip it, for that matter. Ideas are tasted, rather than tested. There’s no time, because in the time I’ve taken to ponder your idea, six more have landed in my feed aggregator.

On one hand, bad teaching can’t corner the marketplace, because it’s just too big and busy. On the other hand, bad teaching may not get the thorough review it deserves because we’re swimming in all these ideas.

But I think it’s more complex. Send this tremendous volume of content into a postmodern environment, where bad teaching and ideas aren’t necessarily readily challenged because none of us are quite certain we’ve got the truth nailed down, and suddenly it’s even touchier. I don’t think uncertainty is necessarily all bad, just more complex.

Does life get more complicated through the ages, or do we just perceive it that way?