It is not what goes into a person’s mouth that defiles them. It is what comes out of the mouth. What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, which is precisely where God seeks to reside inside us, for through the heart, he can touch our very souls. In virtually every circle, liberal and conservative alike, we see hardness, cynicism, the tendency to demonize and slander others, and a blunt, angry, rationalized refusal to look honestly at the truth without inflations, ideologies, denial, and distortion. Lying and rationalization form the root of bitterness, the root of slander, and the root of the unhappy hardness of heart. Have our hearts become so hardened that God cannot get in? Is there a deep resistance in us to God’s grace?