Gaslighting and the Perverse Tongue in Proverbs

This is an excellent and timely article that discusses the perverse tongue. Worth printing off and spending some time studying the Scriptures he discusses.

Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas Light, which was adapted into British and American films in the 1940s, is the origin of the term “gaslighting” that is used so much today. The story concerns a manipulative, evil man who kills a woman to steal rubies. He couldn’t find the rubies at the time of the murder, so he left and concocted a plan to come back and find them. Assuming an alias, he marries a lady who has the money to purchase this house years later. He attempts to drive his wife mad by orchestrating events and then telling his wife that she imagined things. Each night he would sneak into the attic to hunt for the rubies and light the gas lamps. This would cause the gas lamps in his wife’s room to dim. She told him about the dimming of the lamps, and he would tell her that she was imagining it. She was going crazy because he was manipulating her by re-writing history and making her think she was delusional.

As the story progresses, you feel the tension and spite for this man growing inside you. He is evil. He has, what Solomon describes in Proverbs, a perverse tongue.

Read the article: Gaslighting at Kuyperian Commentary