Words matter

Michael Spencer at Internetmonk is always interesting and provocative. He writes a compelling article on the importance of Christian language:

"It occurs to me that it is no longer any news that Christians have abandoned the distinctive vocabulary of faith. I am not making a shocking announcement to say that in our attempt to become acceptable to the larger culture, we have surrendered the words that define our faith. Today, illustrations about squirrels, beavers and geese are expected to be our communication with the world. Christian music has adopted the vocabulary of romance. God is my girlfriend, faith is falling in love, the Bible a love letter and so forth. Preaching has adopted the vocabulary of modern psychology and the self-help industry. Sin is a lack of self-esteem. Christ came to give us meaning and purpose in life. The church is a support group, preaching a motivational talk. Oprah and Dr. Phil, not Paul and Moses, provide our new vocabulary."

We have anesthetized the teaching our churches. I don't think that language is the core problem. I think that the core problem is a lack of intellectualism. Young people today no longer think. They want to have ideas handled to them coated in chocolate. They do want to analyze anything. There are probably many reasons why this is so. Much of it has to do with the MTV-effect. MTV, and almost all of television, is pre-digested material. All the viewer has to do is swallow. No chewing. No cutting. Just enjoy. This has helped to produce an epedimic of laziness. I doubt that MTV is the sole purveyor of laziness. But it has done as much as anything else.

Our non-cognitive education system has added to the problem. We know longer teach kids logic, or latin, or rhetoric. In many schools, all kids have to do is smile and they pass. We no long do things the old fashion way, which is, in Alfred Hitchcock's words, to "earn it." Everything in life is handed to them. The primary skill kids learn in schools is how to build a stool out of toothpicks and marshmellows. Students are not expected to think, so they don't. We they arrive in the church, they expect the same courtesy, that of having the information fed to them. They expect to be entertained, which is what most of our schools major in.

I want my children to think. I hope I can get my kids interested in reading, and thinking. When I watch TV and movies with them, I want to analyze what we see and make a judgement. I want them to own their beliefs. I want them to come to ownership through work. I want them to take the difficult way of figuring problems out on their own. I don't know if I will succeed, since I am often intellectually lazy. But I will make the attempt, something most people never do.