Languages

 Hey, Cobblestone,

    Work with me a minute here. Does anything define a culture so thoroughly as its language? Look at it from the negative for a moment: Does anything separate cultures so thoroughly as a language barrier? If you’re an English-only speaker, a trip into a non-English-speaking airport will answer that question for you in short order. You’re either working hard to understand, or getting on the wrong airplane – while speakers of the native language are having no trouble at all. What do you suppose would happen, then, if, within a culture, language barriers existed? Would it be difficult to express oneself? Would the culture have trouble defining itself? Would there be separation?

    And what about a culture of faith? What if the people within a culture of faith weren’t speaking the same language, or all speaking the wrong language most of the time? Would it be hard to understand one another? Would we be able to hear God?

    Today, Church, we begin to Redeem language – the Lord helping us, of course. I’ve been wanting to click Start on this one for some time, but apparently it hasn’t been the Lord’s timing; I hope I’ve got it right this week… the timing, that is. This will be a miniseries within the “Three R’s” series, and subject to the same measurements: Can we Receive language as all good? Do we have to Reject it as all bad? Or should we see language as something good that’s been set to some bad purposes, and get going on Redeeming it? Here come the measurements…

    Anybody who’s ever ridden a school bus knows language can’t be Received as all good. Some of the harshest and most humiliating words I’ve ever heard were spoken/spit/shouted within the often unfriendly confines of the “cheese box.” If school buses could be considered large rolling Petri dishes, we’d have to admit they’re truly effective experiments. And from there, and plenty of other sources, the concept of words-as-weapon grows with very little help. 

    What happens, then, if we Reject language? As one who has experienced quite a bit of hearing loss already, I can tell you that rejecting language doesn’t point to a bright future full of understanding. Kay and I tried to communicate without words once, fifty feet underwater. It turned out to be one of the more intense – and quirky – arguments we’ve had in 41 years of marriage. Funny story… now. Ask her to tell it to you – ask her to please use words. Words, and the language they build up to, are nothing if not useful. Whether the uses are good or bad depends mostly on what the speaker wants to accomplish.

    The notion I keep getting from the Lord, and from his Word, is that language is in dire need of Redemption. Happily, the companion notion is that it’s well worth any amount of work. To a large degree, we – even God’s people – are groaning under the confounding of language we read about way back in Genesis (chapter 11). But at the other end of Scripture, the Not Yet part, there’s complete understanding, and all the effects of language used wrongly are eradicated. Any faithful Christian would see that the redemption of language is the way to go, since we know how the story ends. Looking around our culture of faith, we see some earnest efforts in the right direction. But there’s another agenda at work – an agenda working solidly against the redemption of language – and that’s what the Lord is prodding me to tell you about… and invite you into the battle against it.

    To give credit where credit is due, I’ll be borrowing a theme from Eugene Peterson, who was known as “the pastor’s pastor.” I’m usually reluctant to bring anything to you, Church, that isn’t straight out of Scripture – and usually don’t – but this theme has been familiar to me for a long time, has been tested against Scripture in the life of our church, and found to be whole and healthy. Peterson said all of language can be put into one of three categories. Though I’ll be using different terms, they are basically these: the language of Love, the language of Information, and the language of Persuasion. 

    The language of Love is the first one we all learn. Trust was built as, when we were infants, we made our needs known and conveyed affection to those who cared for us. Our first recognizable words were terms of endearment. And then we lose it. We regain it when we fall in love – then lose it. We regain it again as fresh new parents – then lose it again. Whether it comes around after that is anybody’s guess.

    The language of Information we pick up in school. So many things to name, so little time! Rules and history – even mathematics depend on language and the information it conveys. 

    The language of Persuasion is what we use to make things happen. Without lifting a finger, lips and tongue and vocal cords use air to bring about events. Very clever, huh?

    When the serpent came into the Garden to deceive (Genesis 3), he used language… but not all of it. Unable to speak the language of Love (he doesn’t even love himself, being a hot mess of unmitigated anger and avarice), he used the language of Information (“Did God really say…?) to set up the oh-so-Persuasive lie (“You will not surely die…). Sometimes I think the serpent was more surprised than anybody that it actually worked. But since it did, he has stuck with the same strategy ever since. 

    In Genesis 11, God confounded human language because mankind had gotten way-the-heck too big for his britches. As a kid, I often wondered why God didn’t just knock down the Tower of Babel; as an adult, and having been on more than a few job sites, I understand that confounding the builders’ language was a stroke of pure genius. Since then, God has provided a multitude of chances for us to do works of redemption in language, and encounter him on his terms – which are the only workable terms. Meanwhile, the serpent (that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world… Revelation 12:9), having seen that humans are prone to deception through Information and Persuasion, set in motion a plan I’m going to call “Secondary Confounding” to keep humans from encountering God at all… or each other, on any kind of loving terms.

    Stepping back a few paces and looking at the languages of Love, Information, and Persuasion, can you see how one of them plays less well with the other two? One will be humble, not seeking its own gain. The other two are all about the ambition, and coupled together, doubly so. Can you see how a culture of faith would be harmed if the language of love isn’t the primary language? Yes, we need all three, but Love has to be spoken on purpose because it won’t assert itself, and the other two would steamroll it. The problem is, even among God’s people – we are so saturated in the languages of Information and Persuasion, not seeing the outside from the inside, we plug them consistently into our worship services, our Bible studies, and our conversations with each other… as if we knew no other way. In so doing, we drop into the same deception the serpent worked on our originals. And we haven’t even begun to talk about what happens when we try to engage a yet-unbelieving world on the serpent’s terms.

    This will take a while, beloved. It’s not exactly like pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, because God is with us and for us, but it won’t be easy – or cheap. We will have to choose a language that seems less effective, and make it our first language again.

    I figure the first and maybe the most helpful step would be to speak the language of Love to our Father, in the simplest terms possible. Straight from Scripture, and from our Bible reading plan last week, here is the purest little prayer starter I know of:

I love you, O Lord, my strength (Psalm 18:1).

    Seven one-syllable words – even though it sounds almost infantile, I’ll make no apologies, because it goes straight from the heart, to the heart. Let’s roll with it, holding off any embellishments, and see where we are this time next week. 

Grace and Peace (and pure speech),

John