Before we hit “send,” Christians need to remember that there’s a person on the other end of our words and Scripture has much to say on the consequences of hasty, thoughtless words.
A wife volunteered to bring concessions back to her husband at a baseball game. It was supposed to be a gesture of love between a woman and her grieving spouse. Instead, it turned into a viral nightmare fueled by a culture divided, addicted to outrage, and hasty to make judgements.
The situation I’m referring to took place a few weeks ago at a San Francisco Giants’ baseball game, where Giants’ television announcers Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper saw a mom named Erika carrying her baby in a carrier strapped to her chest while she also delivered food from the concession stand to her husband.
As baseball play-by-play booths often do, they took a moment to imagine what was being said between Erika and her husband, Ramses, creating a playful dialogue and calling Erika “mom of the year.”
At first the devoted fans were happy to know they had been the subject of the joke, but that quickly changed when the video went viral and millions from across the globe responded with vitriol.
Social media users called Ramses a “deadbeat” for eating his food before Erika. Others said their marriage was abusive and that Erika should leave him. Others were even more hateful. According to Erika, some told Ramses to kill himself.
The hate became so intense that Erika wrote a post on Substack explaining what really happened that night.
They were at the game to celebrate the life of Ramses’ longtime friend, a baseball player who had passed away but had no memorial service. Her post disclosed that Ramses offered to hold their baby while she went to the concession stand, but Erika decided to keep the baby in the carrier on the chilly night, calling her “our little ‘hot pocket.’” When she later texted asking what kind of food he wanted, Ramses replied, “Whatever is shorter.”
He also offered to take the baby when she returned and to let her eat first, but she insisted he eat first because she had eaten before the game. Erika said he even asked if she wanted him to feed her while she held the baby.
But the rest of the world didn’t hear that. And more importantly, it didn’t care. After Erika published the article, social media users attacked her, even posting conspiracy theories that her posts were fake.
The “mom of the year” they were all so eager to defend was now in the way of their outrage at her husband, and so she too was an enemy.
The Untamable Tongue
It’s par for the course for a society that just can’t quit talking. One recent analysis of political content found that the average reply time to post is between 48 and 115 seconds, depending on the platform. The same analysis found that the fastest replies, in as little as under 10 seconds, were more often angry, while longer waits tended to produce calmer, more reasoned responses.
The latter response is, of course, the more biblical one, a principle shared in James 1:19-20, which advises,
“This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”
James devoted a large quantity of his letter to speech and the power of the tongue. In verse 26 of the same chapter, he wrote, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.”
Stephen Davey, pastor of The Shepherd’s Church and president of Shepherds Theological Seminary, noted that in James’s discussion of the tongue in chapter 3, he switched to using a personal pronoun, translated in English as “we,” showing that the apostle included himself in the struggle with speech.
This is seen in James 3:8-10, which states,
“But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.”
But it isn’t just James who believed that a rush to angry speech was sinful or foolish.
Proverbs 18 has much to teach us about hasty words. Verses 6-8 say,
“A fool’s lips bring strife,
And his mouth calls for blows.
A fool’s mouth is his ruin,
And his lips are the snare of his soul.
The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels,
And they go down into the innermost parts of the body.”
And verse 13 warns:
“He who gives an answer before he hears,
It is folly and shame to him.”
Meanwhile, Proverbs 15:1 states,
“A gentle answer turns away wrath,
But a harsh word stirs up anger.”
Those admonitions are rarely heeded in the 21st century world, where a harsh word is all we seem to have for each other. The scripture of social media says, “Be quick to comment, slow to listen, and the first to be angry.”
Words Can Hurt
Such kneejerk and thoughtless reactions have real-world consequences because the people we see on social media are real.
Erika and Ramses are a perfect example. They are not public personas; they went to a baseball game to spend time together as a family. And yet they have paid a tremendous price because thousands of people couldn’t mind their own business.
Erika has remained magnanimous and tried to bring something good from it. She recently wrote,
“Going viral has shown me firsthand that we have become quick to vilify people from a brief clip, filling in everything we cannot see with assumptions. You could see that my hands were full. You couldn’t hear my husband offer to help or hear me tell him to eat. You couldn’t know that he was grieving or that I wanted to take care of him that evening. If our viral moment contributes anything to the ongoing cultural conversation about how we judge what we see online, I hope it reminds us to be more comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know the whole story.’
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is more than an expression. It is a life philosophy that asks us to be curious before we are certain, to leave room for an explanation, and to remember that the person on our screen has a life beyond the moment we are watching.”
But no matter how many lives are ruined, no matter how much pain it causes, we all just keep rushing to judgment.
Out of the Heart
Where does all that hateful speech come from? A hateful heart.
As Davey put it, “The tongue is really nothing more than the messenger that delivers the mail composed by the heart. It simply tattles on the heart.”
Solomon said it this way in Proverbs 16:23,
“The heart of the wise instructs his mouth
And adds persuasiveness to his lips.”
And of course, the inverse is true as well. As Jesus explained in Luke 6:45,
“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”
What James teaches us, as does our own experience, is that everyone stumbles in their speech at some point. (Christ was the only one able to tame the tongue completely.) And when we do stumble — by saying or posting something unkind, crude, rash, or evil — it is because of a fleshly failure inside of us.
But when hateful speech is habitual? That shows that the heart itself is enslaved to wickedness.
A Warning
Jesus made clear that every unthinking, unkind word we utter will come back to haunt us one day.
Matthew 12:36 states, “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.”
In our modern world where everyone feels like they need to have an opinion on everything, and online outrage is currency, it can be tempting to shoot from the hip and spew cruel or haphazard thoughts.
“It’s just a Facebook comment,” or “It’s just a joke,” won’t cut it when we stand before God.
I try to pray every day that God will make me quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry and to take criticism in humility; and I fail at it pretty much every day. My occupation is in words and writing this article made me remember that for everything I write I will give an account.
That’s pretty daunting.
So, Christians, before we write that comment or respond in anger to another human being who bears God’s image, let’s all remember James’s words. We should listen not to respond but to understand, then carefully consider how to reply — or whether we need to reply at all.
The internet moves fast. Wisdom calls us to slow down. Help the Standing for Freedom Center bring biblical truth, clarity, and compassion to the conversations shaping our culture.
