I realised somewhat recently that we are running out of words, and this to me is horrible, it’s been a dim half-understood thing for a long time, but it’s always been horrible.
words are becoming, in the terms of francis schaeffer, contentless labels that people throw meaning into. I have never liked labels: ‘intellectual’, ‘artsy-type’, ‘Christian-evangelical’, ‘Christian-fundamentalist’, ‘homosexual’, ‘Scholar’, whatever. Some of you will know how much I don’t like labels, whether they’re tagged on or self-identified. I don’t like them because I’ve always been dimly aware of how they don’t MEAN anything, in and of themselves, they’re packed with ambiguous value and bias depending on who’s saying it to whom. A person is NEVER just ‘artsy-type’, or just ‘homosexual’, or just ‘Christian-fundamentalist’. A label becomes reductive, and that makes me angry.
Except I only recently realise how this is symptomatic of something deeper; a fundamental failure of language, today. 21st century, after liberal theology and relativism and the Creation of New Terms and the Co-opting of Old Terms and how the world is breaking down into a million hermeneutic cliques.
take the word ‘God’ for instance. somebody says ‘God willing’, do they mean God, a distinct being with a will separate from your own, or do they mean God, a vague sense of optimism and goodwill I feel towards myself when I am in church and JESUS LOVES ME WOO.
Lots of christians are told that the biggest threat to christianity in the 21st century is materialism, the lust for new shiny things, but materialism is nothing new. There’ve been new shiny things material things to tempt people since Cain realised Abel had more, and why should we be any different?
No, the big danger for Christians today is that few people are telling new Christians enough about who God is, and people assume we can just sell ‘God’. What kind of God? Take your pick: the God of the prosperity gospel, the God of the consumer churches, the God of the upwardly mobile, the God of Healing for Minor Ailments, the God of religious ecstasy.
Language, people, language. The words you use are dangerous. ‘I have faith that I am right; God is with me. I am sure that I am doing God’s will.’ Who is God? Do you know Him well enough to say this? Christians are taught in churches to Always Call First on the Name of the Lord, but are they learning Who He Is, or are they just calling out to a vague word, a general feeling of optimism, or self-will, or pride?