Adonai, set a guard over my mouth, a watch at the door of my lips. (141:3)

Considering all bad habits, the compulsive desire to get in the last word is a tough one to break. It is rooted in a desire to win. The combative spirit bursts forth upon spotting the chance to raise oneself up by correcting, chastising or further clarifying.

Communication ought not be a competitive sport, but even a cursory glance at the comments below published articles often reveals a high level of belligerent language. The character of “Topper” in Dilbert is that guy you avoid speaking to, with his unbelievable ability to turn every statement into a soliloquy about himself.

You say, “I’ve been reading this great book called ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and I’m thinking that most of the misfortune that people experience in their life is connected to their poor choices. What do you think?”

He responds, “Absolutely right, I’ve made great choices and that’s why I just got a promotion, and in my spare time I’ve been writing my own self-help book which will help you get our of the rut you’re in.”

Or the response to “I just got a new dog and I finally trained him to stop peeing in my slippers!” is “Great, my dog barks once when he needs to do #1, twice for #2, and three times when he wants me to change the channel! He hates CNN – much prefers Fox News.”

And then there are the people who can talk in long, multi-page paragraphs without checking to see whether the listener is still listening. But even those of us who want to listen and show sincere interest in the other person find ourselves occasionally responding in ways that are more about our insecurities than about the other person’s needs.

The wise words of the Psalmist remind us that we ought to have a door at our lips that we should regularly close, or a least a filter which regulates how many of our words escape our mouths.

Let slanderers have no place in the land … (140:12)

I write a weekly column for a Michigan-based website and my local newspaper titled “Ethics and Religion Talk.” Each week I publish three or four responses from different religious traditions to reader questions on ethical or religious issues. I enjoy writing the column and many people enjoy reading it, including a group of people hostile to anything religious who read the column “religiously.” Each week they post sarcastic or just plain hostile comments belittling those who take religion seriously. Worse, they post anonymously. My multi-faith panel of clergy work hard to carefully craft their responses. They stand by what they write, in public, under their own names. It is painful for me and for them to be subject to the criticism of people who make no effort to understand why we say what we say or to find anything positive in our words and hide behind pseudonyms, lobbing verbal grenades.

The difference between gossip and slander is that gossip my be true or false, but slander is a false statement about another person. The literal translation of the Hebrew phrase is “a person of the tongue,” but the translations/commentaries I consulted all agree that the intent is a slanderer. The thing about people who slander anonymously is that they don’t have to worry about thinking deeply and being careful with facts so they can dash off quick comments, while those of us who care about accuracy and stand behind our comments publicly spend more time crafting our words. If I controlled the platform, I would not allow anonymous comments (“have no place in the land”), but alas I don’t. So I choose to rise above their slander and hope that the nature of their communication speaks for itself.

Sometimes, like the Psalmist, the best we can do is hope for a better future. In the meantime, all we can do is model excellent behavior and comport ourselves with dignity.

Too long has our soul been saturated with the ridicule of the complacent, the contempt of the arrogant. (123:4)

Ridicule and contempt wear down our souls. They are weapons used against those who take an unpopular position. Rather than engage in discussion and analysis of the pro’s and con’s, the path of a bully is to use tactics of intimidation by belittling the message or the messenger.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is a child’s magical incantation to ward off the pain of being put down with words. It rarely works, because it is extraordinarily painful to be belittled, even just with words. It hurts not to be taken seriously.

The complacent and the arrogant might believe that things are great just the way they are right now, and no change is needed. They might believe that the status quo is dead and radical change is the only way to survive. It is not their ideas that make them complacent or arrogant, but rather the way they express them, with the certainty that they are right and anyone who opposes them is wrong.

Leadership of an organization, beware! For only so long will your volunteers devote their time and resources if they are not valued. Healthy individuals can handle the fact that not every proposal will survive the test of committee discussion because they know that not every idea is necessarily a good one. But even emotionally stable people will walk away if ridicule and contempt, complacency and arrogance, are the response to every proposal.