If You Attach fishing Lures to Your Tongue, Are You Willing with Baited Breath?

There is something disturbingly appetite-draining about driving up to the fast-food restaurant window and receiving a sack of food from someone with a ball-bearing or fishing lure surgically attached to his or her nose. Unfortunately, the piercings rarely stop at the nose. There are very few contemporary, John Wayne-like westerns where the cavalry rides in at the last minute to save the fort from the marauding bad actors posing as Indians. Now I know why. If the movie were made today, the Indian chief would have to say, “White man speak with forked and pierced tongue.”

            Not that I walk around the mall inspecting tongues anymore, but you do not have to sit very long on the husband-unifying benches before actual humanlike beings parade by with earrings protruding from areas that were once occupied only by air, lint, fat, or saliva.  Shishkabobbing my tongue or you name the body part, is not high on my to-do list – unless it cures baldness. But then who wants a hairy tongue  . . . except for Alice Cooper fans.

            Pierced and/or hairy tongues are not the only obstacles we face in understanding the complexities of today’s mouth. Did you know there are over three hundred different types of bacteria inside your mouth? . . . three thousand if you recently ate at a truck stop. Except for the occasional germ that reaches us through Texas, most of the bad germs enter our bodies through the mouth – and like telemarketers, they stay forever . . . unless you floss.

            As early preschoolers, we learn to put things in our mouths, except for peas. This continues until the teen years, when nothing enters the mouth unless it is shaped like a pizza or an earring, and on into the adults years, when the mouth seems to be particularly partial to feet. If you think this is not a problem, just look into the mouth of the next person you meet and see how devastating the carnage is from bacteria . . . and too many telemarketers.

            Indians, Alice Cooper fans, and dentists are not the only people concerned about the mouth – or what comes out. From the time our children first begin talking, we parents carefully monitor their progress and sometimes correct their grammar or scold them for using a less-than-appropriate word in front of grandmother. We also teach them to use respectful words with all people. Too bad we are not as conscientious about adult mouths.

            Some adults use the tongue to bait people into saying something they will regret later. Others see chastisement – the negative, piercing sound of their own voice – as a spiritual gift. My Bible disagrees. James 3:6 says the tongue is dangerous, “an evil power that dirties the rest of the body.”

            Sounds like a bacteria . . . but it can be treated. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you”(NLT). And Hebrews 4:12 says, “God’s Word is powerful, piercing even our soul and spirit.” If we must do something with our mouth, let’s do it according to Scripture. It’s the only piercing our tongue will ever need.