The tongue has the power of life and death' (Proverbs 18:21).
I am at a friends house and I joke saying something like, 'that would give me a heart attack.' They warn me, 'don't say that.' I realise that they fear that because I have mentioned the words heart attack I might bring it into being. To me that sounds more like the modern superstition of manifesting than anything Christian.
It seems that the text that underlines such superstitious thinking is where Proverbs says, 'the tongue has the power of life and death.' But is that a correct understanding of Proverbs?
Proverbs has a lot to say about how our words can bring encouragement or stir up strife. It contains lots of practical advice on how we should speak. But it does not encourage a superstitious attitude to words. Their is life and death in words because they can do great harm and great good.
Apparently the 'name it and claim it' attitude to words goes back the the New Thought Movement of the late 1800s and was incorporated into Christianity by a Baptist pastor named E. W. Kenyon. The slogan of the time was, 'what I confess, I possess'.
What does this attitude say about God? Is says that we are sovereign not God. Our words force his hand. It also suggests that he is far from being a good father. What sort of God gives their child everything they ask for or allows sickness to a child because they happen to utter the name of an illness?
At the end of the day the sad thing about the word of faith movement is how it encourages selfishness and greed and undermines the sovereignty and goodness of God.
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