"Don't speak those words over yourself" – do our words have power?
“Recently I was joking around when I said something like ‘I’ll probably get cancer or something now.’ One of my friends became very serious and said: ‘Don’t speak those words over yourself.’ I didn’t know what she meant by that. She explained that our words are powerful and she didn’t want me to speak anything bad into my life. I didn’t really understand what she meant and it’s made me nervous about what I say even when I’m joking. Can you help me understand this better?”
Great question! I’ve had similar experiences to yours, and the perspective of your friend seems to be growing in popularity.
It’s worth taking some time to examine the roots of your friend’s belief, because there’s a whole theological system sitting beneath the surface, even if she doesn't know its name.
What your friend said comes out of a stream of theology usually called Word of Faith (also known as Positive Confession). It teaches that our words carry a kind of causative spiritual power — that speaking something, good or bad, can bring it into being. The movement traces back to the early-to-mid twentieth century, and is probably best known today through the ministry of the American televangelist, Kenneth Copeland. In the context of 2000 years of church history, this theology is an extremely recent development, but it has had global reach, even among people who've never heard the label "Word of Faith."
Two errors underpin the whole system, and both are worth looking at here.
Error one: a text taken out of context
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue...”
The verse that’s usually referred to is the first half of Proverbs 18:21. This verse is understood as a metaphysical law rather than a proverb. But the book of Proverbs is wisdom literature, full of generalised, observational truths about how life tends to go, not universal promises or hidden mechanics of the universe. Read in context, it's saying something true and important: what you say shapes relationships, reputations, and your own heart (see also Proverbs 12:18; 15:4). That's an ethical claim about speech, not a claim that a throwaway line about cancer functions like a magic spell that summons disease.
Error two: collapsing the Creator/creature distinction
This is the deeper (and more serious) problem, and it's often where you'll hear the argument taken next: "God spoke the universe into existence in Genesis 1, and since we're made in his image, we have that same creative power in our words." One popular Copeland booklet on this subject asserts that believers have "that same God-like ability to speak those things which be not as though they are" – which takes Romans 4:17 but substitutes God for believers and grants them power that only God has. It's also propped up by a specific mistranslation of Jesus's words in Mark 11:22, rendered as "have the faith of God" instead of "have faith in God" — swapping trust directed at God for possession of God's own creative power.
But nowhere in Scripture is human speech treated as the same kind of thing as God's speech. When God speaks, reality obeys, because he is its sovereign author (Gen 1:3; Ps 33:9; Heb 1:3 — he upholds all things by his powerful word). When we speak, we're derivative, dependent creatures whose words are morally significant but not creatively sovereign. Confusing the two isn't a small category error. It subtly relocates who's actually in charge of the world — from the God who "works all things according to the purpose of his will" (Eph 1:11) to the individual with the right formula on their lips.
That’s a belief system that looks much more like sorcery than Scripture, and it describes a very different God to the one revealed by Jesus when he instructs us to pray "Your will be done," not "my words be done."
I hope you can see that these two fundamental errors: text taken out of context, and collapsing the Creator/creature distinction lead us to a theology which is dangerous, if not, blasphemous.
“So too, though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts great things. Consider how a small fire sets ablaze a large forest. ”
James 3:1–12 is the clearest biblical text we have on the danger of the tongue, and it's worth reading for comparison. James' concern there is relational and moral — blessing and cursing people, gossip, hypocrisy — not the claim that offhand remarks summon events into being. It's a caution about character, not a claim about causation.
So, was your joke wise? It might be worth asking yourself why cancer was the go-to line. If maybe there's some anxiety underneath worth reflecting on – and giving to Jesus. But that's a pastoral question about the heart, not a metaphysical one about your tongue's power over your cells. Your words are morally serious, but they are not divine.
I note your nervousness about ‘saying the wrong thing…’ My friend, be free from the fear that a throwaway comment somehow reached over God's providence and flipped a switch. He is the Creator, we are his creatures. Those switches are well beyond our reach.
Love, Jonathan
