There is an old saying that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”.
Evidently, there is a group of people that no longer believe that. I watched a discussion between two
men who “identified” as women and a conservative commentator. The conservative guy said that
gender dysphoria was a psychological disorder. A couple of days later I read an article from a liberal
reporter that said, after speaking with those two self-proclaimed women, that the two felt “threatened”
and “unsafe” because of what was said. One of them said he took to bed for two days, depressed and
frightened. The reporter claimed that the commentator had committed violence against the two men.
Can words, speech in general, be violent? That is, is it on the same level as physically hitting someone?
One psychologist said that it was, because it causes stress and stress is detrimental to a person’s health.
That’s quite a stretch, isn’t it? But Pamela B. Paresky (Ph.D.) said in “Psychology Today” that “Speech
may be upsetting, but that doesn’t make it violence. For leaders to assert that speech is violence is not
only incorrect, it’s harmful.”
Equating speech with physical violence is, indeed, harmful. It will eventually shut down opposing
viewpoints. Take colleges, for instance. It has become the norm to ban conservative speakers from
college campuses because their speech (conservative ideology) is considered violence against certain
people groups and more “liberal” thinkers. Therefore, discussion and dialog are shut down.
But it is not just college campuses. It is permeating civic and governmental activities as well. Fringe, far
right groups are being more and more successful in getting governmental agencies to bow down to their
ridiculous and outrageous ideologies and shutting out all so-called violent speech. They use the phrase
“hate speech” to blanket all dissenting ideas. The resulting banning of said “hate speech” is that a lot of
long-standing Christian doctrine and theology can, and will, get branded as hate speech and make it very
much more difficult to live out our Christian lifestyle…and even to share the Gospel.
But we must not be shamed into silence. I listened to a college professor comparing hate speech to
“shouting fire in a crowded theater.” The part of that analogy that is too often overlooked is this: if
there is a fire in a crowded theater, someone better shout it out…right? With all this obviously wrong-
headed and embarrassingly dumb ideologies bouncing around in the theater that is our nation….we
need to call it out!
Say good things about your Savior and His church on this bluff.
Bro. Tony
Evidently, there is a group of people that no longer believe that. I watched a discussion between two
men who “identified” as women and a conservative commentator. The conservative guy said that
gender dysphoria was a psychological disorder. A couple of days later I read an article from a liberal
reporter that said, after speaking with those two self-proclaimed women, that the two felt “threatened”
and “unsafe” because of what was said. One of them said he took to bed for two days, depressed and
frightened. The reporter claimed that the commentator had committed violence against the two men.
Can words, speech in general, be violent? That is, is it on the same level as physically hitting someone?
One psychologist said that it was, because it causes stress and stress is detrimental to a person’s health.
That’s quite a stretch, isn’t it? But Pamela B. Paresky (Ph.D.) said in “Psychology Today” that “Speech
may be upsetting, but that doesn’t make it violence. For leaders to assert that speech is violence is not
only incorrect, it’s harmful.”
Equating speech with physical violence is, indeed, harmful. It will eventually shut down opposing
viewpoints. Take colleges, for instance. It has become the norm to ban conservative speakers from
college campuses because their speech (conservative ideology) is considered violence against certain
people groups and more “liberal” thinkers. Therefore, discussion and dialog are shut down.
But it is not just college campuses. It is permeating civic and governmental activities as well. Fringe, far
right groups are being more and more successful in getting governmental agencies to bow down to their
ridiculous and outrageous ideologies and shutting out all so-called violent speech. They use the phrase
“hate speech” to blanket all dissenting ideas. The resulting banning of said “hate speech” is that a lot of
long-standing Christian doctrine and theology can, and will, get branded as hate speech and make it very
much more difficult to live out our Christian lifestyle…and even to share the Gospel.
But we must not be shamed into silence. I listened to a college professor comparing hate speech to
“shouting fire in a crowded theater.” The part of that analogy that is too often overlooked is this: if
there is a fire in a crowded theater, someone better shout it out…right? With all this obviously wrong-
headed and embarrassingly dumb ideologies bouncing around in the theater that is our nation….we
need to call it out!
Say good things about your Savior and His church on this bluff.
Bro. Tony