BABBLERS IN THE CHURCH

The New Testament has much to say concerning sins of the mouth. And today those same faults can be extended to those who spout off on the Internet at the drop of a hat without first engaging their brains or their hearts. A very recent example of this occurred the other day after the tragic loss of lives in the Kerrville flood, not very far from where I live. A public official posted on her Facebook page that she bet that not nearly as many people would have been upset by this event if it had happened to a group of minority girls instead of “lily white” ones. I would hope that if she had had time to think it over and carefully draft a letter to send to the newspaper, she would had thought better of it and not shared that opinion. But with modern technology, we can just rant and rave to our heart's content, push a button, and the world can read it, for better or worse.

There are many such faults of the tongue condemned in the Bible in relation to actions in church bodies, just one of which is the tendency of many of us to talk too much off the top of our heads with little thought as to what we are saying or on the effect it might have on the listeners. Here are just a few of the biblical passages in which this subject is discussed, along with some personal observations I have made in my many years in various church settings, especially in Sunday school classes.

Proverbs 10:8

Waltke translates this verse as, “The wise in heart accepts counsel, but the babbling fool comes to ruin...The wise in heart, as opposed to the 'wise in their own eyes' (cf. 3:7), knows that he is in need of teaching and welcomes it...Whereas the wise in heart are characterized by continual inner, spiritual growth that leads to wise speech (16:23), the babbling (lit. 'lips') fool despises wisdom and discipline (1:7). The fool is so full of himself that instead of having the capacity to accept wisdom he dangerously prattles out his own 'clever opinions,' which are devoid of true wisdom (cf. 10:13) and scorch like fire (cf. 16:27). By his undisciplined words he entangles himself and comes to ruin. In its teaching about the proper use of speech and the necessity for taking good advice, Proverbs follows the wisdom tradition of the ancient Near East. Here a contrast is drawn between the man who pays attention to the command or advice, of the wisdom teacher and the man who makes a fool of himself by giving advice when he himself is ignorant.”

Merrill explains that in the great majority of cases, a reference to “lips” refers in general to verbal communication. “For the most part, sapa is associated with negative or harmful speech...One who speaks without thinking is called 'a 'man of lips' (Job 11:2)...Such people are fools...”

“A wise person is teachable, willing to become wiser (cf. 1:5; 9:9). But a fool...does not quit chattering long enough to learn anything. In Proverbs needless talking is often associated with folly.”

(Buzzell)

Additional passages listed by Zuck regarding teachableness include Proverbs 10:17; 12:1; 13:1,13,18; 15:5, 31-32; 19:20.

There was one gentleman in a church I attended who also had been part of a small Bible study group during the week. He fancied himself a budding preacher and missionary although he had absolutely no training or aptitude for those roles. Since our church would not support him financially because he did not want to undergo the required prior “vetting,” he thought he could dig up support for his rather hair-brained “ministries” among the members of our small group. He asked for advice from me, which was rather out of character for him. But he totally ignored what I had said to him and went in the opposite direction after telling me how much my advice had encouraged him, obviously not listening to a thing I had said.

Not having learned my lesson, I later made the mistake of asking him to present a 5-10 minute devotional in the Sunday school class I was teaching before the lesson itself. When the day came, he again completely ignored my words and proceeded to babble on and on about absolutely nothing at all for the whole 90 minutes, and I had to scrap the lesson I had been preparing for a month, which I attempted, somewhat unsuccessfully, to do with perfect equanimity.

Matthew 6:7

This verse reads, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words.”

Hill states, “To heap up empty phrases (battalogeo) is probably connected with the Aramaic battal ('idle, useless'): the word is used in an Aramaic papyrus from Qumran meaning 'without effect'.”

In the same vein, Albright and Mann write, “The Greek word (battalogein) can be used of stammering, and so of constant repetition. Battos (stammerer) and cognate words suggest constant repetition rather than continually interrupted speech.”

And France adds, “Their approach to prayer is characterized by two colorful terms, first 'babbling,' a noisy flow of sound without meaning, and polylogia, 'much speaking,' 'many words.' It is an approach to prayer which values quantity (and perhaps volume?) rather than quality. It is not necessarily purely mechanical, but rather obtrusive and unnecessary.”

“We must not 'babble' (an onomatopoetic word – battalogia, literally, to say batta). In light of vv. 7-8, this at least refers to a long-winded and probably flowery or rhetorical oration.” (Blomberg)

Most of us have probably experienced in church the sort of person Jesus is talking about. Their prayers are long and repetitious, full of their favorite phrases from the Bible which they quote quite out of context. That was why I was never very good giving prayers during church services; I tended to get straight to the point, knowing that God already knew what was in my heart, and as a result my prayers were always much shorter than was felt to be acceptable. I think my problem was that somehow I had the mistaken idea that God was my audience, not the others in the congregation who might need edification from me during that time.

Even worse were those whom my wife encountered who took the opportunity during verbal prayers to put certain unnamed others (“You know who you are!”) in the audience in their place.

This teaching could also be applied to those senior pastors I have known who are in love with their own voices and over-rehearse their sermons down to every small inflection in their voice. We once had such a perfectionist who was indeed an excellent speaker, but he tended to overdo it. As an example, he delivered one sermon while fighting laryngitis. His message was perfectly understandable to all, but he was just not satisfied with it himself. So two weeks later when he was completely recovered, he delivered the exact same sermon again.

Such a driving need to appear before others without any apparent flaws was his eventual undoing. A deranged woman who had been attending the church for only about two weeks took it into her head that she would be helping the pastor out if she aimed a gun (fortunately unloaded) at his head during his morning sermon. Whatever in the world was in her mind at the time, the upshot was that one of the elders, an ex-football lineman, ran up on stage and tackled her while the pastor cowered behind the pulpit crying for help; the woman was carted off to jail; and the pastor had a nervous breakdown and disappeared for weeks until he was tracked down at a psychiatric clinic. He never did return to any pulpit ministry again, as far as I am aware.

I Timothy 5:13

Knight, among others, sets the context for this teaching by explaining that widows who are “enrolled” in the church are given financial support by the church and in turn are to spend their time in helping to carry out various good works for the benefit of those in the congregation.

Hendricksen: “Writing then about a certain type of young widow, the apostle's description becomes very vivid..,. They would become not only idle but chatty and meddlesome. (Note the play upon words: argoi periergoi. One might translate: 'not busy workers but busybodies'...). Of course, the result was that thus they might easily be doing more harm than good. In the midst of their vivacious chatter they would often 'say things which they should not (say),' creating problems for the church instead of solving any!”

I had the unfortunate “privilege” to witness a good (or should I say, bad) example of this class of Christian women. In this particular case, she fit the description of an “enrolled” woman in that she was the paid church secretary, an important job and one that certainly should not be held by one who has “loose lips.” One time when our church was between senior pastors, she became convinced that the official powers to be at the time, the deacons and personnel committee, were not treating the assistant pastors with the respect they deserved. And in an attempt to redress that sin, she used her privileged access to the home and e-mail addresses of all the church members to send out a scathing letter denouncing those two groups in no uncertain terms for their actions.

This unfounded accusation had the immediate effect of dividing the congregation into two warring camps, with the chairwoman of the personnel committee (of which I was a member) being hounded and chased down the hall during Sunday morning church by a screaming young man loudly berating her for her actions and demanding an immediate explanation. And within a few weeks, most of the young married couples left the church along with one of the assistant pastors to start their own short-lived church.

3 John 10

In denouncing a self-appointed church leader named Diotrephes, John censures him for his accusations against him. “phluareo can be used of babbling and talking nonsense (cf. the adjective in 1 Tim. 5:13) and hence of making empty, groundless accusations.” (Marshall)

Similarly, Bruce says that “the verb phlyaroo, here rendered 'prate,' means 'talk nonsense.'”

“Diotrephes was making evil accusations, unjustified charges. He was talking nonsense and 'spouting silliness.' There was an emptiness to what he said as well as a vicious and wicked intent.” (Akin)

Treatment of Such “Problem Children”

By no means all of those who in church settings tend to babble on and on do so for purely selfish or evil motives, and these must be handled with love rather than with censure. For example, I have run into at least three such men in the various churches of which I have been a member.

One had somewhat of a fixation on a particular theological doctrine, the absolute sovereignty of God. That is certainly a subject that needs to be stressed, but he did it to excess and felt that any teaching hour in Sunday school was totally wasted unless it mentioned that particular subject or at least refrained from (heaven forbid) actually suggesting than we had any human responsibilities for our actions.

I don't think he realized how disruptive his comments were when he felt he must constantly interrupt the speaker in order to make that one point. My solution was quite simple. I assigned one of the summer lessons for him to teach all by himself. He hemmed and hawed his way painfully through the lesson and learned first-hand that it was not very easy to fill over an hour of time keeping to the subject at hand while also incorporating into the talk his pet subject. It was at least a year after than experience before he even made a comment in class.

Unfortunately, when he reverted to his old behavior, someone else on our teaching team was presenting the lesson. That teacher, usually a very even-tempered man, totally lost his temper and chewed out that member of our class in no uncertain terms in front of others. The poor man stayed away from the class for over a month before daring to show his face again.

I had tried my own gentler technique earlier at another church with a member of our young married class, who I would guess had a rather limited intelligence and no social sense whatsoever. He tended to raise his hand during class and then babble on with comments which none of us could make heads or tails out of. The solution used above worked here also. We let him teach one lesson all by himself, and he did not acquit himself well, as even he recognized. Again, that experience seemed to satisfy his need to be recognized as a full member of the class, and that was apparently all he was trying to accomplish.

At yet another church, a very dear man in the class, would interrupt the speaker with comments which seemed to not be very well thought out in his own mind before talking. And so after about 5 minutes, he would apologize profusely to the class for his interruptions, and do the same for the speaker when the class was over. It was awfully hard for anyone to get upset about his actions since there appeared to be absolutely no evil or selfish motives behind his actions. I tried my best to assure him that no one had any hard feelings against him, and I took an interest in his personal life. That seemed to help a little, and we are still friends.