Just Venting?
Proverbs 29:11
A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.
One of the most popular film franchises of the last decade is The Purge. Without recommending these movies, their foundational premise is interesting, revealing, and worthy of our consideration. The Purge is set in a future America. Crime and unemployment have all but vanished. The nation is enjoying unprecedented peace and prosperity because one day each year, citizens are allowed to “purge.” During this 12 hour window, all crime, including murder, is legal and the people take to the streets to release the suppressed evil they carry inside. And so the nation is engulfed in the flames of violent chaos by which the survivors believe their souls cleansed and their nation reborn.
Though none of us would approve of such a barbarism, the same misunderstanding of human nature and indwelling sin is at the root of what we call venting. Venting is vocalizing negative emotions, saying everything you feel, raw and unfiltered, to a trusted friend or loved one. What follows is usually a slanderous, vulgar, selfpitying, selfrighteous, and destructive tirade of toxic words that come belching up from the vile depths of our sinful hearts. When we’ve emptied our magazine and are all out of word bullets, we usually say to the victim of our venting something like, “Thanks I just needed to vent… I feel better now.” But do you? Do you really feel better? Have you ever felt closer to God through venting?
Solomon said, “A fool gives full vent to his spirit…” It’s downright dumb to think that good will come from unrestrained speech. Why? Because “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34), or according to the NSV (Neil Stewart Version), “the mouth is the heart’s exhaust pipe.” Since the fall, the heart of sinful men and women “is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9)? That’s why James called the tongue. “a world of unrighteousness, set on fire by hell, a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:6).
Now, the Lord in no way discourages honesty, authenticity, and vulnerability in our human and heavenly relations. He invites it, even commands it. James called upon struggling believers to “confess [their] sin to one another that [they] might be healed” (James 5:16) and Paul urged Christians in Galatia to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). Time and time again, the Psalmist bore his heart to the Lord in tearful desperation, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me” (Psalm 13:1-2)? But all of our speech must be governed by Paul’s instructions, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).”
“A fool gives full vent to his spirit but,” Solomon adds, “a wise man quietly holds it back.” A wise man knows the monster that lurks in the shadows of his own heart. He knows that his tongue isn’t a fluffy puppy to be let off the leash from time to time, it’s a seething, clawing, gnashing beast that needs to be tightly bridled! He realizes that God’s jurisdiction extends not just to his words but even to his secret thoughts. He prays not only that the words but also “that the meditations of [his] heart would be acceptable in God’s sight” (Psalm 19:14). And with the help of God’s Spirit, the wise man strives to “make no provision for the flesh” (Romans 13:14), take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), like the old praise chorus we sang at youth group, “Over every thought over every word, may my life reflect the beauty of my Lord.”
A wise man realizes that venting edifies no one; that the sinful heart is not a boil to be burst and drained but a fountain that must be cleansed by the transforming grace of God; grace that can only be received through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the only man who never “stumbl[ed] in what he [said],” the “perfect man” (James 3:2) who lived and died to save us from our sinful thoughts and words, that we would be holy as he is holy.
