Defiles

Your words don’t just “slip out” when you’re stressed. They come from somewhere. Jesus shows us in Matthew 15: what goes into the mouth passes through, but what comes out reveals the heart and can defile, degrade, and damage the people around us. That idea lands like a mirror, especially if you care about faith, leadership, and the kind of community you’re building at home, at work, and in the world. 

In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about spiritual maturity as the ability to critique and question your own thought patterns without spiraling into shame. Instead of living on a rushing river of emotion and reaction, they explore what it looks like to pause, reflect, and bring scripture into the process with honesty and humility. Jesus isn’t dismissing health or religious practice; he’s going deeper, pushing past external rule-keeping to the internal patterns that produce slander, blame, resentment, and unneighborly behavior. Listen in for the full conversation.

Read For Faith, the companion devotional.

Transcript

Spiritual Maturity Means Self-Critique

Bishop Wright 0:00

I mean, here's another definition of spiritual maturity. The ability to critique and to question your own thought patterns. That's maturity, right? So you're just not on a sort of a flowing, rushing river of emotion and thought, but at some point you gain the ability where we're able to reflect. And for the believer, we're able to bring the word of God into our reflection process.

Melissa 0:28

Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. A weekly conversation inspired by For Faith, Bishop Wright's weekly devotional sent out every Friday.

Welcome And The Defiles Devotion

Melissa 0:56

You named your devotion this week Defiles, and it's based off of Matthew 15, chapters 10 through 20 and 21 through 28.

Jesus Redefines Purity In Matthew 15

Bishop Wright 1:07

Yep, let me read that with you. You are what you eat. That's well-worn wisdom. We all know that. But now Jesus tells the other half of the truth. Whatever you eat goes in the mouth, moves to the stomach, and then to the sewer, Jesus says. But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. And this is what defiles, degrades, impairs. Out of the heart, Jesus says, comes evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and slander. Never underestimate our ability to externalize things rather than to look internally. This is true for nations and organizations and relationships. The heart is far more difficult to manage than the stomach. Yet it is the change in heart that sweetens our relationships with ourselves, with God and neighbor.

Melissa 2:13

Yeah, man. Okay, Bishop. So, you know, my first take off this is like, okay, Jesus is literally saying that the stuff you um just poop out is not as as degrading or disgusting, or potentially so as what could come out of our mouth.

Bishop Wright 2:32

Yeah. Well, you know, for the for the purists, we we remember this is this is Jesus, the Hebrew Grio, Jesus the the sort of poet, the storyteller who traffics in hyperbole to make a point. So for all those very serious dieters, the vegans, vegetarians, and all those sorts of things, he's not dismissing, right, um, real intention around dietary laws, you know, in terms of religion or in terms of our understanding of putting healthy things into our body. He's not dismissing that. He's just using that as a springboard to have a deeper, better conversation. This is what got Jesus killed, because Jesus never saw a sort of religious law on its face and left it there. He went deeper, he took us deeper, he did jazz on it. And so that's what it is. So for the people he's speaking to who are meticulous about what goes in the mouth, about when to wash the hands, about all these other sort of purity codes and purity laws, Jesus has another purity that he wants to talk about, and that's the purity of the heart.

From Hurt To Heart Transformation

Melissa 3:36

Yeah. And I I I feel like we we're walking a slippery slope, right? Because the heart is often vilified.

Bishop Wright 3:44

Yeah.

Melissa 3:44

In so many, and I think we're we're missing the point. I don't think it's I don't think the heart is all bad. You know, like watch, be careful of your heart, don't trust your heart. It's just oftentimes rage, bitterness, resent, resentment like spews out from us in a place of passion and anger because we haven't done the work to transform it in healthy, beneficial ways. But that aside, Bishop, can you say anything about just that, just so that we're approaching this responsibly so people don't hear a black and white idea or something?

Bishop Wright 4:17

Yeah. Well, no, I I I think that I think by heart he's saying, you know, uh, let's take a look at how you process things. Let's took a take a look at uh perhaps your biases. I mean, here's another spiritual maturity: the the ability to critique and to question your own thought patterns, right? That's maturity, right? So you're just not on a sort of a flowing, rushing river of emotion and thought, you know, sort of just viscerally responding. Uh, but at some point you gain the ability, I hope we do, where we're able to reflect. And for the believer, we're able to bring the word of God into our reflection process and to critique, not shame, not guilt, uh, not condemn, but we're able to bring as much objectivity to our patterns and our pattern making as we can. This is maturity. And so, and so I think what Jesus is trying to say here is that uh without a you know an examined pattern of thought and therefore action, um, we are highly likely to take up behaviors, processes which are uh, you know, perpendicular to who God is uh revealed to us in scripture. And so it is easy, as one of my favorite lines that uh that Jesus says to the religious folks, like myself, is that you know, you strain a gnat, right, and you swallow a camel, right? You're very worried about the minutiae, uh, and yet, you know, you you you miss the whole sort of point. It's a great little phrase from him. And so I think what he wants us to do here is to realize that the origin of some of these evil behaviors, the origin of some of this, uh of some of this unneighborliness that you and I produce in the world comes from deep-seated stuff. And the deep-seated stuff is not uh is not immovable. That's the good news in the text. The good news in the text is that in God's word uh and in Jesus' example, we find a process by which we can begin to address some of the behaviors, right, that come out of our mouths. Um, look, uh, my wife and I were watching, we we love a good movie, and we were watching one movie in particular, and and we were noticing uh that a person had been deeply, deeply hurt uh in their childhood. And uh and um and they took up certain behaviors in response to this deep pain and brokenness. Now, the pain and the brokenness, all legitimate, right? All legitimate. No, no, no pain, shaming from me. But the way in which they chose to process that pain came out into the world as vengeance and evil, right? And it continued a cycle of abuse rather than saying, I have sufficient spiritual resources, psychological, emotional resources, where I can transform this thing that has happened to me. I didn't deserve the thing. The thing is what it is. It's terrible, it's abuse, et cetera. But I choose to take up an agency, right? So that I end this thing here as best I can. I think this is what Jesus is saying. So he is actually saying that within the heart lies incredible possibility, an incredible capacity. And I think that if you and I were to be able to sit down a moment and list out, we've met people who have had a capacity of heart for transformation. They could tell you stories of transformation. They could tell you about where they made a conscious decision to take a left turn and not a right turn. Um, and it meant all the difference, and certainly meant all the difference to the people that they later met. And there are dramatic stories. Um, you know, one of my famous ones is that Nelson Mandela was held unjustly in prison for 27 years. He turns around and invites the jailers, his jailers, his captors, to his inauguration. Right? So that's a dramatic example, but but I think there are smaller examples in front of us, not returning evil for evil, blessing those who curse you, praying for those who despitefully use you. All these are Jesus' conflict process um steps. Uh, so I think that one of the things we might do is move from saying, I believe in God or I believe in Jesus, uh, to I believe in God and believe in Jesus so much, I'm going to implement their conflict, you know, how to uh transform conflict strategy.

Melissa 9:21

Mm-hmm.

Bishop Wright 9:23

That might be something we would call worship.

Where God Is In The Text

Melissa 9:50

Yeah. Okay, so Jesus is talking a lot about human, human condition, human behavior, out the way we relate to our, I'm just saying, religion. Like because we believe we're, we're, we're, we're gonna be, we're gonna be mindful about the impurities and yada yada yada.

Bishop Wright 10:08

Yeah, sure. And which is not a bad thing.

Melissa 10:10

Not a bad thing at all. I'm just curious where God is in all of this. Like, what does this say about God? What does this passage specifically say about God?

Bishop Wright 10:20

Well, I think what it says is that it says a couple things. It says something about God, it says something about us. I think what it says about God is that in our creation, that we're made in God's image, that we have an incredible spiritual power in each of us to transform ourselves, right? To address things. But they have to be addressed, right? I think what sort of uh really confounds Jesus and frankly upsets him uh is our willingness to look away from these things, right? Um, and to really get hooked on um what's happening externally. You know, what concerns me now is uh in America, for instance, I know we have listeners in other countries, and this is also true in other countries, is that uh we've become so focused on what's happening in Washington, D.C., we don't know what's happening uh in our own families, in our own home, or in our own neighborhood. And I understand the attraction to be tantalized and to be seduced into thinking about other things rather than the things in your own life. So Jesus here is calling us back to our capacity to start with ourselves.

Name The Struggle, Own Your Part

Bishop Wright 11:38

And so, you know, I always invite people on a season. So, what would it be like to have a frank conversation with yourself and to say, what do I really struggle with? Right? He talks about evil, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and slander. What is what is my struggle that clearly does not line up on the positive side of things that God would have us to be about? And then to really just get real clear with that, name that, and then begin to make a journey. And then to maybe even do some exploration. Where does that come from? Right? So, where does theft come from? The need to defraud people, right? To take other people's things. What's wrong with me? What's going on with me that I need to take your stuff rather than to be happy with, you know, for you with what you have, right? Not to covet and then there take the next step, but to steal. What's what's going on with me when Jesus talks about evil intentions, right? What's going on with me? What what's the hurt little boy? What's going on with him? Right? Or the or the guy who doesn't feel like he's enough so that I have to sort of uh slander you. What's going on with me? That might need to be what's addressed rather than an obsession. I'm not saying we don't need to pay attention to our elected officials and you know take up our stake and our democracy. Of course we do that. We need to do that. But it's interesting at this ability that we have to externalize everything. I meet people from time to time, and somebody else is always the problem. And they don't have any accountability in the situation, none at all. And I always ask people, uh, you know, from time to time, I get the privilege of marrying people, and sometimes I get to marry people uh who have been formally married, so there's been a divorce. And uh and I always ask, because I think it's important to stop hemorrhaging uh and not and not to bring new hemorrh, you know, old hemorrhage into new relationships. I always say, well, what was your part in the demise of that relationship? It's it's not to condemn anybody, certainly not, but it is to say, Oh, that was my part. That part was my part. And so I I am aware of it, uh, and I want to move to another place so that I can enjoy the sweetness of this relationship, this new relationship.

Shadow Work Builds Whole Communities

Melissa 14:08

I love that. Bishop, you're you're kind of describing shadow work, you know, like Yeah, exactly. By another name, for sure. Look at your shadow, deal with your shame, figure out where it comes from. But you just described keen insight. And I don't know that we can gain insight unless we are introspective, unless we can ask ourselves difficult questions. And I think Proverbs lifts that up like greatly. You know, wisdom, wisdom is only goes so far. Wisdom leads to further and further and further insight. And so I don't know, Bishop. I think you just knocked on something pretty darn important.

Bishop Wright 14:44

Well, I hope so, because I think it's so critical. Um, you know, Jesus is interesting, he's interested in the community being whole, right? And so, and so I think one of the points he's making here, implicit in this, is that for the community to behold, be whole, it's just not the people at the top, right? It it's all of us. We are somehow woven together spiritually, psychically, economically, right? Even physically. And so what is going on with you is also going on in the community, you know? Um, and so I've gotta, I've gotta take a look at it. You know, I yeah, I've said this before, I uh, and it bears repeating. Um, so why don't we do this is the other question. Why don't we do this? If it's so apparent for you and I can have this chit chat about it, why, why, why isn't it, why, why don't we do it? Well, because it's hard work and it's just easiest, it's easier to live an uninterrogated life. It's more comforting to think I'm on the solution side and not the problem side. It's it's more, it's easier, it's better for my ego, frankly. Absolutely. And my ego my my superficial sense of myself to say, well, Melissa's clearly the problem, right? Melissa's got the problem. And I I, you know, uh, you know, I'm all rainbows and unicorns over here. It's all her problem. And we do that everywhere. We do that in relationships, we do that in organizations, we do that, we do that as a nation. Uh we do it, we do it everywhere. A better approach, perhaps, would be to be curious rather than defensive. Rather than defensive. You know, I mean, we do it nationally. We'd rather tell our store self a story of mythology rather than the much messier story of what it has meant for us to be a nation for 250 years, which I think is a great story to say we've stumbled, we got this wrong, we got this right, you know, and as the old preacher said, we ain't what we used to be, right? And uh, and we're not what we're going to be. So we're in process. You know, so what Jesus is asking us to be in in many ways, in a word, is honest. Honest with ourselves and honest with another. And that's the building block of real community.

Melissa 17:05

Indeed.

Final Takeaways And Ways To Connect

Melissa 17:06

Bishop, thank you so much for your wise words. And listeners, thank you for listening to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright or by visiting www.forpeople.digital. Please subscribe, leave a review, and we'll be back with you next week.