Swear Not At All

"But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." (Matthew 5:34-37). Is it any wonder that the Word that in the beginning was with God and by whom the worlds are and were created warned us to be careful with the words we use? Words have power. We may not yet have the power to command a single hair of our head to be black or white, but if we truly follow the Savior and come fully unto Him, then we are promised that one day everything that the Father has will be ours, including the power to say "Let there be light" and then there is light. But if we are ever to get to that point, then we have to master our communication in our mortal state. Even if we can not yet speak and bring entire worlds into being, we can see how powerful words can be. In our time where something we say can suddenly be heard and repeated to millions of people through the power of the Internet, we can see how mere words can dramatically and swiftly upend a person's life. There are students who lose their scholarships because something they said one time when they were being silly resurfaced and went viral. Fortunes can be lost, careers ended, lives ruined by tweets or snippets of a video. The Savior's counsel to let our communications be yea, yea and nay, nay has never been more prudent. We have to learn to be careful with our words because they have more power than we usually give them credit for, and because if we truly seek to become more like our Savior, our words will only get more and more powerful. Jesus said swear not at all, and I would add to that, lie not at all, gossip not at all, belittle or demean or verbally abuse not at all. Don't make promises you don't intend to keep. Don't say sorry if you don't mean it. Don't humble brag. Don't neg. Don't troll. Don't dox. We like to pretend, especially on the Internet, behind anonymous usernames, that we can say all sorts of lies and vile and abusive things and it doesn't matter because it's "just words." But we know our words have power and we wouldn't be saying those things unless deep down we actually hoped that they did exactly what we intended them to do. We are children of God, and as His children, we have inherited His ability to change the world through our words, so we had better be sure that we are using the right ones.