Has anyone ever said something judgmental or negative behind your back that questioned your motive, integrity or character? If so, how did it make you feel when you found out about it? Probably pretty rotten, right? Nothing is more painful than when someone says something about you that is blatantly untrue. In fact, few things have the power to ruin a relationship like critical, accusing, defaming, hostile and inaccurate or even slanderous words. All of us can probably think of a time when we were hurt by someone’s words. And we probably know of at least one good relationship that was destroyed, a church that had split or a family that doesn’t talk anymore because of hurtful words. Using slanderous speech means saying something untrue or negative about another person. More specifically, it’s saying something about someone (that may or may not be true), but when we say it, our motive is to make others think less of that person. Most of the time we’re not aware that we’re using slanderous speech. It happens in our normal conversations and even in our prayer requests! It’s often not even intentional or willful. It’s the kind of speech that rolls off our tongue and doesn’t ever come to our minds. So, why do we wound others with our words? When we have a conflict with our spouse, our boss, kids, or even with friends, it’s much easier to cast blame and assume that the problem is the other person. We do this in order to justify our behavior. Rather than facing our own insecurities and fear of rejection, we choose to put down the other person first. Let us be more careful about what we say unto others because, like sticks and stones, words actually can hurt a person.