As I shared during the 11th Step of John’s Ladder, when the tongue is not submitted to God to be disciplined and purified, it will inevitably become a tool for sin. Our words may become a weapon to hurt our neighbor, by saying cruel things to them or by slandering them. Talking too much may lead us to making a distasteful joke or mocking someone in jest when they are in a fragile frame of mind. Talking too much even on matters of theology can lead us to speaking heresies, without thinking.

Another obvious sin that is empowered by the gift of speech is FALSEHOOD. This is by no means an easy subject to tackle, because falsehood is a very broad word. It covers a whole range of things, from breaking the ancient commandment of “bearing false witness”, which is a direct violation of the mother of the commandments which is to “Love your neighbor as yourself”, to being   untrue to others. This is why St. John includes in this 12th Step: LYING, RUMORS, GOSSIP, FALSE PROMISES and HYPOCRISY.

St. John points out that we cannot put all lies into one category, let alone condemn every lie as sin. He mentions an example from Scripture that liars frequently lied in order to justify their love of falsehood.

A similar case of lying out of necessity is to be found in Genesis (12:11-13) when Abraham tells his wife to say she is his sister, for fear envious men will kill him and his wife for themselves. St. John is naturally concerned that people will go on appealing to these passages in order to avoid dealing with the passion of falsehood. At the same time, he does not deny that the Old Testament saints committed no sin by lying in those cases.             More to follow!