The Ministry of Holding One's Tongue

Brother Bonhoeffer taught the importance of speaking fewer words, especially when the more words spoken would tend to tear down others rather than build them up. In his chapter from Life Together devoted to the "ministry" we owe one another in community, he places the "ministry of holding one's tongue" as the first.

Bonhoeffer counsels us to practice these ministries in order to guard against the natural tendency toward ascendancy and control that arises in every human community. This grasping for power is frequently accompanied by condemning and judging others in the struggle of the natural man for self-justification.

In response, Bonhoeffer writes: "Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words. It is certain that the spirit of self-justification can be overcome only by the Spirit of grace; nevertheless, isolated thoughts of judgment can be curbed and smothered by never allowing them the right to be uttered, except as a confession of sin . . . . "He who holds his tongue in check controls both mind and body" (James 3:2ff). Thus, it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him."
. . . .
"Where this discipline of the tongue is practiced right from the beginning, each individual will make a matchless discovery. He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him, putting him in his particular place where he can gain ascendancy over him and thus doing violence to him as a person. Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be. His view expands and, to his amazement, for the first time he sees, shining above his brethren, the richness of God's creative glory."

Through my on-going experiences with students, colleagues and administrators up to this very day, I continue to learn the wisdom of Brother Bonhoeffer's words that affirm, in nearly every context and circumstance, the adage: Fewer words are best.