Part 3, Chapter 26
In school, many of us have done experiments with Litmus Paper. I remember using it in science class to figure out whether a substance was a base or acid. The type of paper we used was blue and if it turned blue, the substance was a base and if red it was an acid. It is good to know what a substance is. But we should take it further, as we want to know the pH of the substance. A pH of 7 means that the substance is neutral, anything above a 7 and up to 14 means it is a base and anything below a 7 and down to 0 means it is an acid. The more it approaches 14 or the closer it gets to 0 the more dangerous it can become. We need to know the pH to protect ourselves. When dealing with chemicals it is important to know this so that we don’t cause any harmful effects. Something that is neutral is something that won’t cause tissue damage if it comes in contact with something like our skin.
In the devout life, we want our conversations to be neutral. We want to talk about God in a healthy way. We want to be true to Him in all that we do. So we want to avoid the extremes (notice that generally avoiding the extremes is a good thing). “Our words are a true test of the state of our soul” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 125). How we talk about God or don’t talk about God shows where we are at with God. “The tongue is quick to point out what we love” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 125). We can spend hours talking about God and making it look like we are very pious, but truly underneath this we don’t really know God and we are just trying to show off. This would be like an acid approaching a 0. On the other hand, there can be a danger of not talking about God at all. In this case, we live in fear about what others think of us or we don’t want to offend anyone by talking about God so we just avoid the subject. This would be a base approaching a pH of 14.
It is important to talk about God in our lives, but to be real and true with who we are. Too much talk about God or none at all are the extremes. We should in the devout life feel free to talk about God at times and not; always with respect toward Him. God has given us a tongue so that we can praise Him and thus we should be willing to do this with people with whom we talk too.