You Fool!

     When I am with friends, I enjoy engaging in banter back and forth. In so doing, the occasional insult is flung back and forth. Most times, the exchange is understood to be purely in jest and nobody's feeling are hurt. Once in a while though, the insults are intentional and serious.
     In such cases, today's Gospel is a good reminder of just how important a matter our speech is to God. Jesus tells us that those that hurl insults at their brothers shall be liable to the hell of fire. (Mt 5:22) We often treat matters of speech as something less than our actions. Yet Jesus explicitly condemns the unrepentant insulter to hell. Why is this so?
     First and foremost, we often ignore or fail to realize that when we insult someone we are really casting judgement, not just on the person's action but on the person themselves. We don't often say to our brother or our friend, "your action is idiotic." We feel more comfortable calling the person an idiot. By insulting the person rather than the person's behavior, we make ourselves out to be superior. This gets to the heart of the reason why we insult each other: because we are insecure. The secure person has no need for insults. When we insult another, we hope to draw the crowds attention away from our own faults. We hope that by beating others down, we may appear to rise in reputation, without actually working to improve ourselves.
     Insulting others is laziness incarnate. It is a refusal to deal with our own problems. Jesus stopped the elders from stoning a woman once by imploring the one who was without fault to cast the first stone. As the crowd dispersed, Jesus, the true One without fault, says that as the others have no right to condemn her, He has no will to condemn her. (Jn 8:3-11) Thus, we should have no will to cast insults on others until all our faults are perfected. This can only occur in Heaven, once we are in the full possession of our God. Until then, I will continue to try to curtail my use of insults and attacks on others. One of the best suggestions I've heard is that when you feel like insulting somebody, use some self-deprcating humor instead. If we learn to be more critical of ourselves, we will be less inclined to want to judge others so harshly.