Should Christians Call People "Idiots"?
Introduction.
It is a common scenario. Perhaps a reckless driver pulls out in front of us
nearly causing an accident. Maybe someone in the grocery store blocks the aisle
or takes too long to pay. It may be a co-worker or a classmate upsets us. It
could come from a friend or family member in the heat of an argument as angry
words are exchanged. Emotions flare, our blood boils, our mouth opens and we
say the words “you idiot!”
This is not behavior that is only
practiced by unbelievers.
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Christians say it all the time.
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I have heard preachers say this from the pulpit.
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Friends may say it playfully to one another. Brethren say it in
frustration about one another.
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I grew up saying it without a thought. After all, I reasoned, “it
isn’t a curse word,” and “I am not using the word ‘fool’—that’s what Jesus
condemned, right?” That’s probably what many Christians reason within our
hearts.
A few years
ago, however, something challenged my thinking on this and has forced me ever
since then to revise what I had practiced all of my life up until that time. I
had the honor of working on a commentary on the gospel of Matthew. A commentary
is basically a written verse-by-verse study of a biblical text. A writer is
forced to consider, “what does this text teach?” and “how does it fit
in with the rest of Scripture?” He must then write it down in such a way
that a reader can open the pages and basically, at any time have a one-on-one
study with the author about any verse of that particular biblical book.
I.
Matthew 5:22-23. At one point in my work I came to two verses in the
Sermon on the Mount. Jesus declared:
You have heard that it was said to those of old,
“You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.”
But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall
be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, “Raca!” shall be
in danger of the council. But whoever says, “You fool!” shall be in danger of
hell fire (Matt. 5:21-22, NKJV).
These words were not new to me. This was the text I had
used to defend my own practice. Right there is was in print. I would never say
“you fool” but calling someone an “idiot” was not the same thing (or so I
thought).
II. Context. Jesus
begins in this section of the Sermon on the Mount a series of antitheses, by
which He offers counter-propositions that contrast declarations from the Law of
Moses (or their misapplication of mosaic law) with His own teaching under the
New Covenant.
A. This
would have seemed quite shocking to the Jews of His day.
B. The
Jewish teachers of the Law often taught by saying “it is written,” Jesus says
here “But I say to you” (cf. Matt. 5:22, 28, 32, 34, 44).
C. This
is undoubtedly part of what led them to say that He taught “as one having
authority, and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7:29).
III. Focus of this
Antithesis.
A. In this antithesis Jesus lays
down a fundamental principle of the New Covenant: accountability before God for
the condition of one’s heart.
1. It is not enough to avoid the
external act while holding contempt within the heart. The thought of the heart
can place one “in danger of the judgment” (5:22a).
B. Civil authority cannot judge the
heart, but God will at “the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).
C. Jesus taught, “For out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false
witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man” (Matt.
15:19-20).
IV. “Whoever Says to
His Brother ‘Raca’.” Within this context Jesus used an example of an
insulting word that was considered unacceptable among the Jews in order to
illustrate the error of using a similar insult that (in Jesus’ day) appears to
have been considered allowable.
A. The Jews thought that insulting a
fellow Jew with the Aramaic term “raca,” was an offense worthy of
answering “to the council (tō sunedriō).”
1. A. H. McNeile in his commentary
on Matthew explains that this was, “Probably not the supreme court at
Jerusalem, but the local court of discipline (Josephus, Antiquities
4.8.14; cf. Matt. 10:17= Mark 13:9), which met in the synagogue” (62).
2. According to the Babylonian
Talmud a city with a population of at least 120 would have its own Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin
17b).
B. Scripture doesn’t tells us what “raca”
meant, but Jerome, the 4th-5th century theologian
claimed that it was equivalent to the Greek word kenos, meaning “empty,”
and he defined it to mean “useless or empty” and “without a brain” (Commentary
on Matthew 5:22).
1. George Lamsa in his Holy
Bible from the Ancient Eastern Texts: Aramaic of the Peshitta inserts the
comment that “raca” means “I spit on you,” but this
may reflect a more modern application of this word within the Syriac (or
Assyrian) community, rather than its ancient meaning.
C. The related Hebrew word rq
meant “empty, vain, or worthless” and was used in the Old Testament of
“worthless men” (Judg. 11:3; 2 Sam. 6:20; Prov. 12:11; 28:19).
V. The Greek term “fool (mōros).”
A. Jesus seems to infer that the
Jews of His day did not consider the Greek term “fool (mōros),”
from which we derive our word “moron,” to be as vulgar.
B. Roger Congdon argues that the use
of this older term was considered by contemporary Jews “as equal to cursing, a
terrible sin, while the modern (to them) word of foreign derivation carried no
such odium” (119).
1. He compares this to our own
tendency in English to consider some words of Anglo-Saxon background indecent,
while words of Latin derivation are considered acceptable.
2. We can illustrate his point in
this way: have you ever wondered why we eat “beef,” but we don’t eat “cow”? The
word “beef” is derived from the Latin word bovem, while the term “cow”
comes from the Anglo-Saxon word cū.
3. At some point in the history of
English our ancestors determined that cū just wasn’t quite
sophisticated enough, so now one is used of food, while the other applies to
the animal.
C. Congdon explains further, “in
God’s eyes, an evil word in Greek, Latin, or modern English is just as bad as
an evil word in Anglo-Saxon” (ibid.).
D. Jesus doesn’t seem to be teaching
that one insult is worse than another.
1. They recognized that “raca”
was bad.
2. He calls them to see that a
sophisticated or tame sounding insult is just as bad—it can send one to hell!
3. Jesus challenges us to recognize
that it puts one in the place of God to speak disparagingly of other souls. We
are not the judge. Insults are a type of judgment.
VI. The “fool” in
Scripture. Some have, over the years rationalized Jesus’ words to
apply only to what the term “fool” infers about one to whom it is
applied in Scripture.
A. Robert
Mounce suggests, “The fool in Hebrew thought was not the intellectually
incompetent but the person who was morally deficient. This kind of fool lived
as if there were no God to whom he must account for his profligacy (cf. Ps.
14:1)” (45).
B. Psalm
14:1 declared, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
1. This
has sometimes led Christians to argue, “the point is what the term says about
one’s relationship to God,” reasoning “I can call someone a fool (or an idiot),
so long as I don’t mean it in that way.”
VII. How do New
Testament writers uses the term “fool (mōros)”? The problem
with this reasoning is what we find in the rest of the New Testament record.
A. After
Jesus lays down this law, in apostolic example, while the term mōros
may be applied to one’s estimation of himself (1 Cor. 3:18; 4:10)...
B. ... Or
to things that are “foolish” (1 Cor. 1:27; 2 Tim. 2:23; Titus 3:9), but...
C. ... An
apostle never calls someone a “fool (mōros).”
D. We do see
the milder term aphron meaning “without reason” or “unwise” (Eph. 5:17)
directed by apostles to others (1 Cor. 15:36; 2 Cor. 11:16; 1 Pet. 2:15),...
1. ... But
this word does not carry the sting or the judgment of a person’s worth that mōros
does.
E. We
also find the example of Michael contending with Satan over the body of Moses.
1. This
account shows us that even when one may deserve “a reviling accusation”
(which Satan certainly did) it was not Michael’s place to make such
determinations (Jude 8-10).
Conclusion. If
an angel was not right to do it, how can it be right for us? Is the term “fool
(mōros)” any different in meaning from saying someone is an
“idiot,” or saying he or she is “stupid”?
I believe brother Kenney Chumbley sums
this up very well, concluding that Jesus “is teaching that insulting
language—name calling, racial, ethnic, and social slurs, etc.—that demeans a
fellow human being is condemned by God” (98).
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I no longer call other people “idiots” because I believe to do so
is a direct violation of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:22.
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I believe Modern Christians should not minimize the force of
Jesus’ words.
It is wrong to call another person a “fool,” but it is
also wrong to use other more “acceptable” insults as well. Christians should
not call other souls “idiots,” “stupid,” or “morons” (which is the exact Greek
word that Jesus condemned). Jesus says that to do so can place us “in danger
of hell fire.”