By Shaun Stahle
“What is the most powerful weapon in the world?” I asked a class of fifth graders in Fielding Elementary School many years ago.
The Gulf War was raging at the time. Every news cast led with horrific scenes of destruction. “The Apache Helicopter with laser-guided smart bombs,” blurted one boy. “Nah,” said another. “Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships.”
The boys grew animated with some coming out of their chairs in mock imitation. These sparkly-faced boys knew their weapons of mass destruction.
After the teacher restored order, I suggested that neither the laser-guided missiles nor the Apache Helicopter—as powerful as they were to level big buildings into little pieces of rubble—were the most power weapons in the world.
More guesses followed. “How about nuclear bombs?” asked another.
“No,” I said long and slow, squeezing every second to build tension. “The most powerful weapon in the world…is words.”
Words: the Most Powerful Weapon in the World
The class went thunderously quiet. Faces contorted. The mental torture of trying to figure how words trumped bombs in causing agony. “Words?” someone finally bellowed. “When did words ever win a war?”
“Think about it,” I suggested, trying to ease their pain before their faces froze in those positions. “When mean words are said, you get angry. When you get angry, you could throw a punch. If nations say enough mean words, people get angry and tempers flare. They sometimes hurl bombs. But do you feel like poking someone’s nose who has complimented you?”
I’m not sure the students understood my analogy. I’m not sure the teacher did either. But I still think the premise has merit. Words tell stories. Stories evoke emotions of virtue such as beauty and love. Such emotions build into peace and contentment and gracious living. Harmony and unity are the result.
Words can also fan the flames of hate and animosity. Words of deceit and injustice can enrage to violence. Instead of unity, we see others as a lower species.
Words Turn Enemies to Friends
President Dallin H. Oaks in his October general conference address recommended that we heed the counsel of a famous musical and make more effort to get to know each other.
He should know. As one who has stood in the heat of intense adversarial debate trying many cases—50, I think—before the US Supreme Court, and as a man deeply cultured in the affections of the Spirit, he knows how to turn enemies into friends.
That’s where we come in. Those who tell stories help society get to know each other. Words and images and sounds are our superpower. The more we use our powers to tell the plight of another, the more we defuse the ugly and demeaning and debase that confronts us.
Most of us will never be introduced in the Rose Garden. None of us will have a finger on the big red nuclear bomb button. But we still have power. “The kind words we give, shall in memory live.”
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Shaun Stahle was yanked from a comfortable bed early one morning at age five to cart newspapers off his grandfather’s printing press and has been cursed with ink in the blood ever since. He spent 17 years detailing the growth of the Church with the Church News. His retirement plan is to find a shoe box full of unmarked bills along the road someday. He says he has saved his wife of 33 years from a life of fame and prosperity.
