Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Monday, 1 September 2014 "Words that can kill"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Monday, 1 September 2014 "Words that can kill"
Daily Scripture:  Matthew 5: Murder
21-22 “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.
Reflection Questions:
Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, startlingly widened the sixth commandment's reach (cf. Exodus 20:13). Contempt or anger, leading to words that tear down and destroy others, is as morally destructive as the physical act of murder, he said. So do your best to make this a happy Labor Day. This holiday is the traditional start of the fall campaign season, full of negative ads and angry rhetoric, and it recalls a history of tense, often angry, labor/ management showdowns. 
Scholar William Barclay showed how Jesus condemned, first, "the anger over which a person broods, and which he will not allow to die;" then the Aramaic word raca, which he said is "almost untranslatable, because it describes a tone of voice…It's the whole accent of contempt;" and finally the Greek mōros, the most deadly offense. "To call a man mōros was not to criticize his mental ability; it was to cast aspersions on his moral character; to take his name and reputation from him." Reflect on how Jesus' words apply to the political speech of candidates and big-money ad campaigns, and your personal speech about candidates and office-holders.
Most of us, it seems, have an innate bias to favor one side over the other when we hear of a labor dispute (whether between millionaire ballplayers and owners, or between minimum wage custodians and management). Which side do you tend to favor, based on your upbringing, temperament and beliefs? How might we use Labor Day, not to divide us from one another, but to help us appreciate the crucial role both sides play in the working of our overall economy?
Today's Prayer:
Dear God, help me this Labor Day to focus more on the things that connect us than on what divides us. Help me exercise discernment in a generous, unifying spirit. Amen.
Insight from Donna Karlen
Donna Karlen serves as the Campus Communications Specialist at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.
Pastor Adam talked, in his sermon this past weekend on politics and religion, about how you can disagree passionately with someone’s political views, yet still see that person as a child of God. As a matter of fact, this person may be sitting in the same row as you in your own church!
I can remember a particularly negative political campaign where one candidate centered her message around a personal attack on the other candidate. Whether the statements she made about her opponent were true or not, the level of hurt was devastating for the family and friends of the candidate being reviled.
This man had children who went to school with the other candidate’s kids–and lines were drawn and sides were taken amongst their friends. I worked with a close family friend who cried as she talked about how the statements being made just did not reflect the character of the man she knew.
I wish I could say that the candidate making the attacks lost the election. But given her popular stand on the actual issues, I can’t help but believe the outcome would have been the same had she chosen to focus her campaign on those issues, rather than a personal attack on her opponent.
Will there ever be an end to negative campaigning? Maybe when the candidates doing the attacking start losing elections. But perhaps it will happen sooner, when each candidate does indeed see an opponent’s family members and friends as persons who will feel pain from the hurtful words being said about someone they love. Perhaps it will happen when we all get better at seeing all people as children of God.
____________________________