… there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but
Mark 7:15, RSV
the things which come out of a man are what defile him.
Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
In this statement, Christ reveals that Kosher dietary laws are insufficient to prevent corruption. The world can poison us, to be sure. But, we only corrupt ourselves when we choose to indulge in our worst impulses.
Our words intimately come from within our minds, hearts, and souls. More than any other chosen action, our words can indicate who we genuinely are. If we indulge in our worst impulses, our words will mark us as having embraced an unwholesome way of life. Those around us will cease to trust us with anything that matters.
By going out of our way to fill our minds with right, beauty, health, and truth, we can each cultivate a capacity to distinguish these things from wrong, ugliness, sickness, and lies. If we do this hard work, not only our thoughts and deeds will be the better for such an effort, but so will our words.
Even at the best of times, gathering our free-ranging thoughts into clear and concise words is difficult. Often, we fail to craft words that clearly express our thoughts in proper perspective. Plain speaking requires intense effort and frequent practice, and even then it is a constant challenge.
Yet, today, like in many dark times past, we are beset by would-be Inquisitors who would eagerly damn us as thought-criminals for our plain speaking. In pursuit of control over us, they would have us live in fear of their reproaches. To avoid being publicly pilloried, we might even begin to police our own thoughts, words, and deeds of anything that could provoke offense.
In editing our words, we would inevitably censor our own thoughts in order to avoid letting anything slip out. Better for us to each amputate whole sections within our own minds and memories than for our bodies to end up in a torture chamber, a Gulag, or a Concentration Camp.
Hundreds of millions did this very thing in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and countless other authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Billions still do this today in Communist China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Russia, and sadly still in Venezuela.
One unexpected horror is that the Left in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States are striving to construct a climate of fear, where politically incorrect expression is cause for shunning, firing, de-banking, or imprisonment. There are many zealots among us who equate dissenting words with violence and with insurrection against “our democracy”.
How many of us have borne the stigmatizing reproaches of being labelled as racist, sexist, or homophobic, all simply for not publicly agreeing with a certain point of view? How many of us have sacrificed to say that 2+2=4, despite that violating some precious person’s Party Line? How many of us have collapsed under such strain? How many lives have been wrecked by cancel culture?
If we continue to abide factions who damn all disagreement as coming from stupidity, evil, or both, then this kind of ideological bullying will become universal. We will lose what shreds of freedom of conscience that yet remain to us.
We cannot afford to lose this battle. Often, the only way to speak plain truth is to offend someone’s delicate sensibilities. Freedom is worth this risk.
