Rudder of the Ship

One of the many reasons why I love majoring in psychology is the way it shows the intentionally that God took in designing us. An intentionality that goes beyond just the physical science but also the science of the mind that influences and is influence by so much in our lives. Something that has stuck out to me here recently in my social psychology class is this thing called the self-fulfilled prophecy. A self-fulfilling prophecy is whenever the expectation we have about a person or situation greatly influences the way we behave so much so that the expectation (AKA the prophecy) comes true. This reminds me of a portion of scripture in James 3. Here James is writing about the power and influence our tongue has over how we behave. Specifically in verse four James compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship. Despite how small the rudder maybe, it has the ability to steer the whole ship into one direction or the other. Our words have that same sort of influence in our own lives. The way we talk about people, the words we form about others in our mind, and our expectations greatly affect the direction our behavior will go when we’re around these people. In the NIV Bible it titles this portion of scripture as the “Taming of the Tongue”. It is important that we are careful of the words we use to speak about and to others, so that we can love and respect them well.

“Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.”
‭‭James‬ ‭3:4‬ ‭NIV‬‬