No is Not a Negative Word

By Alice Scott-Ferguson

 The first word that toddlers gain mastery over is, surely—with few exceptions—the word “No.” That simple word in their possession becomes multisyllabic and, adorned with several inflections, a sentence all on its own. Although we can’t remember our own inauguration into the world of the spoken word, no doubt it commenced the same way. I began to wonder what happens to that ability to say no when we grow older. With increasing years we seem to proportionately decrease in our ability to say the ‘n’ word.

Not only does its frequency diminish, it becomes the hardest word to escape our lips on issues that matter. This is dramatically underscored, for example, in school programs that exhort kids to say no whether to drugs or sex before marriage. In adulthood there is a plethora of programs that cater to our need to be self assertive and congruent. We consider learning to say no one of the cornerstones of a healthy, responsible life style. As believers, it is more than just a tenet of assertive living, but an imperative that we may have missed in relation to living in the Truth. What causes us to relinquish something that at first came so naturally and then have to spend time and money re-learning at a future date?

We lose the art of saying no because of contrived societal norms that see it as counter-productive, rude, and guilt provoking. Such subtleties elude the artless innocence of a child. That they learn the word through hearing it often from parents attempting to protect their offspring from the hazards of living is only natural. If as parents we learned that it is not only a mimicked word but also a valuable one, then we could channel the connotations of the word from rebelliousness to respectful assertiveness on a trajectory towards truth.

I remember when I first knew that the word—on its own—was no longer acceptable. A relative asked me a question about my new life in High School that I politely and adequately answered with the one word sentence, “No.” My father interjected, “That was a very curt response, Alice!” This was his attempt to rout the appearance of rudeness. It was then that I realized that more is better and never use one word when twenty would do. It probably was then that the seeds of a writer and teacher were sown in me (for which I am very grateful to my beloved father). After all, how could those of us who purvey words ever get by with monosyllabic utterances!

Yet that is exactly what Jesus directs when he says, let your communication be, Yes, Yes, and your No, No, for whatever is more than these is from the evil one. The more I explored that scripture, the meaning of the hitherto murky command became clearer. Can you imagine what life would be like if we simply said no without embellishment? No one could come back at us whining and accusing, “I thought you meant” or, “I thought you said,” for no one could misunderstand the meaning of no, even if they did disagree. How sweet the simplicity of life where official forms were once so clear and unambiguous that no or yes were the only answers required! The word that we could then obliterate from our vocabulary would surely be confusion, the hallmark of the evil one. When we embellish, stall, or mislead because we want to appear diplomatic and avoid saying no, we open up the ground where his nefarious work flourishes; the soil of lies.

The roots of unclear communications run deep into the ground of fear—fear of man rather than love for God. Fear paralyses and deceives us into thinking that we will be misunderstood, offensive, and rejected if we say no when it is the simple and sound response. We so often settle for man-pleasing rather than to be true to who we really are—Christ persons. I have a vivid experience that demonstrates this. A dear friend, with whom I’d spent many happy hours horse-riding, had a mastectomy some years ago and could not ride for several weeks, so I volunteered to take out her five year old beauty for his exercise. As the appointed time approached, my misgivings grew and it was increasingly clear to me that I was not to go. However clearly the Spirit spoke, it was no match for my pride to keep my word and please my friend. Mercifully, the accident that occurred on that ride was not too serious but served to get my attention. I then shared with my friend so that we could mutually benefit from the lessons learned from my unwillingness to walk in truth that meant, in this instance, saying no to taking her horse out.

And Truth is the issue here. In Ephesians 4:15 we are told, “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head even Christ.” On a scroll in my bathroom I have this wonderful treatise on love by an anonymous author who is nonetheless immortalized in this piece of work. One of the lines reads, “Love is the voice that says no to our brother, though yes might be more easily said.” Just as parents no’s are mostly a measure of their love for their children and the no of the teenager to drugs is love of life rather than destruction, no, said without fear or favor, means that truth is triumphant.

For the Triune God is Truth and that is now our imparted nature. The result of speaking truth whether it be yes or no, is clarity not confusion, peace in place of misunderstanding and freedom from fear. There can be nothing to dread, no repercussions resulting from doublespeak, when we walk true to who we are. When we realize that we live by the life of Another, such tortuous attempts at change become obsolete. As we submit to that Life within, we will find the ‘n’ word increasingly easy to say just as the littlest among us excels in this ability simply because she is true to who she is.