A Lesson From 'The Mooch'

Your mouth is a window to your brain (and maybe a doorway to your heart).

When you work for the President of the United States of America, and when your job is to be the lead communicator of the White House’s ‘message’, what comes from your mouth really matters. So, if you display a ‘potty-mouth’ to the world, well, you get the picture.  You won’t be the mouth of the office of President for long because when you speak it is not just your own voice the world hears, it is also the voice of the ‘Leader of the Free World’ and all that that description entails. From Australia to Zambia, the world hears the string of expletives and wonders.

The lesson for those of us who claim to speak for God is a very basic and simple one: “remember who you are.” I borrow this idea from John Stott in his commentary on Romans 6.  Stott writes, “It is my conviction that our heavenly Father says…to us every day: ‘My dear child, you must always remember who you are.’”  His point, and mine, is that our conduct, our language, as people who claim to represent God matters, to all who hear us, especially to God.  God is not going to ‘fire’ us as his children, but he very well may ‘fire’ us from being his spokespersons.

I suppose it could be argued that the language of Mr. Anthony Scaramucci (the ‘Mooch’) was excusable because he didn’t understand he was on the record, and he was angrily defending the President. I don’t buy it.  What comes out of your mouth should not be measured by whether you are on or off the record, because, frankly, with God you are always ‘on the record’. There are proper ways to be forceful in the defense of the one we serve.  A profanity-laced tirade is not one of them. So, I applaud the President and his Chief of Staff for sending the right message: he doesn’t speak for this office.  Should he be forgiven for his indiscretion? If he is remorseful, sure. But actions have consequences, as they say, and now he lives with those.

I know that the use of profanity, especially words based on sexual acts, has become a ‘normal’ way of speaking for much of society.  However, of this I am sure, God is not impressed.  If your goal is to ‘fit in’ with society then you need to decide how to do that in a way that doesn’t reveal that you have forgotten who you are: a child of God, sent forth into the world not to ‘fit it’, but to redeem culture for the One in whose behalf we speak.

Or, to quote the children’s song: ‘Be careful little tongue what you say…”  Remember who (and whose) you are.