Watching the baseball playoffs last night, Houston’s pitcher was in trouble. So the pitching coach went to the mound to talk, and, you’ve seen this, the players huddle around the coach and pitcher and hold their gloves over their faces so others can’t know what they’re planning. Their secretive conference over, everyone returns to his place and they put their secret strategy into place.
Don’t we often conceal with our words? Talking with a competitor, you don’t lie but you also don’t tip your hand to what you’re really planning. In a conversation, you pick your words carefully so that your true thoughts won’t be known. “Plausible deniability” they call it. I never said that, but you know you thought it. When is careful speech actually deceit?
“Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil” (Proverbs 12:20). Jesus says the same in Mark 7:22, and it rises to our words and faces. Instead of gloves over our mouths, facial expressions and clever words hide our true thoughts. That’s why the Second Commandment, about words, follows immediately after the First Command, about what’s in your heart. Now if Jesus is in your heart as Lord, you’ll speak lovingly and not deceitfully. “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:21-23).
Are there times when, figuratively speaking now, we put our mitt over our mouth to conceal our words, times when we don’t tell all we know? Yes. The question is what’s in your heart. Are you secretive for the sake of your own advantage, to one-up the other person, or because you’re speaking carefully out of Christ-like love for the person you’re talking to? “Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but those who plan peace have joy” (Proverbs 12:20).
“Upon your lips, then, lay your hand, / And trust His guiding love;
Then like a rock your peace shall stand / Here and in heav’n above.
(Lutheran Service Book, 737, 7)