Your Speech Betrays You

A few weeks ago, my wife, my mother and I went to visit Mrs. Garvin. Mrs. Garvin is one of my mother’s long-time friends. They have known each other for over half a century. They still talk (gossip lol) almost every day. They are so close that they can finish each others’ sentences. One of the reasons that we went to visit Mrs. Garvin is that she had never met my wife, and thus I had never received her seal of approval.

As I am sure you can imagine, a large part of the visit was an extended interview. A few days after the visit, my mother called me and said that my wife had gloriously passed the maternal friendship exam, but that Mrs. Garvin has made a curious observation. Mrs. Garvin told my mother that she did not know that My wife was from down south. “She isn’t,” my mother informed her. “Well,” Mrs. Garvin replied, “she sure sounds like she is.”

Well, Mrs. Garvin is not entirely wrong. My wife does have a southern accent. And no, she isn’t from the south. At least not the deep south. She is from St. Louis, a region of the country that to locals is known as “up south.” Geographically, St Louis is part of the midwest region of the United States. But historically and culturally, St. Louis is as southern as South Carolina.

Although Missouri did not join the Confederacy (the collection of states that split from the United States in 1861 and launched the Civil War over the issue of slavery), it has always been riven by racial conflict. The state of Missouri was birthed as a compromise over the expansion of American slavery in 1820. It was also the birthplace of the infamous Dred Scott case, in which the Supreme Court eventually ruled in 1857 that a black man had no rights whatsoever that a white man was bound to respect. The families of most of the African Americans who now live in Missouri migrated from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. And when they migrated, they carried their customs, their cuisine, and their conversation with them. So when Mrs. Garvin heard my wife converse, her speech betrayed her. The rhythms of her rhetoric, patterns of her patois, and the argot of her accent made it seem like she was from down south.

Whenever we open our mouth, our speech betrays us. This reminds me of a scene from the final days of Jesus’s life. After he was arrested, Peter was standing outside the courtroom where Jesus was being arraigned. According to Matthew 26:69-73, this is what happened:

Now Peter sat outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came to him, saying, “You also were with Jesus of Galilee.” But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you are saying.” And when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, “This fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth.” But again he denied with an oath, “I do not know the Man!”And a little later those who stood by came up and said to Peter, “Surely you also are one of them, for your speech betrays you.”

Peter sounded like he was Galilee. Jesus was from Galilee, and at that time people who were from that part of Israel sounded alike. As much as he tried to camouflage his convictions, mask his affiliations and conceal his origins, Peter’s speech gave him away. The rhythms of his rhetoric, the pattens of his patois, and the argot of his accent clearly and unmistakingly defined him. Our speech always betrays us.

But our speech not only betrays our cultural origins. It also betrays us on a far deeper level. Our speech also betrays our character and our convictions. In Matthew 12:34, Jesus said “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Our speech betray our fears, our frustrations, and our fixations. Our speech betray our doubts, our desires, and our dreams. Our speech betrays our hurts, our hatreds, and our hangups. If you let someone talk long enough, you discover the geography of their heart.

So here is today’s question: When someone hears you speak, where does it sound like you are from? Does it sound like you were born in the Country of Doubt, raised in the city of Failure, and currently live on Suffering street?

Centuries ago, a very wise man warned us that life and death is in the power of the tongue. We should take heed to his warning.