Words Part 2

 When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but the prudent are restrained in speech.

– Proverbs 10:19 (NRSV)

There was another primary debate last night. It was full of words. An awful lot of those words were hateful, vindictive, belittling and abusive. The front runner was lashing out with typical lack of restraint calling others names and putting them down with an air of superiority and disdain. A lot of words spoken but it felt like not a lot of worthwhile words were shared.

Like it or not, words have power. They can uplift, inspire, rally and create vast possibilities. They can also demean, enslave, instill fear, cause riots, and make normally good people do very inhumane things. When you add tone, setting, inflection, emotion, body movements and volume words can take on even more power and significance.

Words can hurt. I remember the first time my eldest child said to me in a fit of pre-schooler rage, “I hate you!”  It stabbed me in the heart. It devastated me. Here was this precious child that I would do anything for, whom I had made a solemn covenant with God to nurture and protect, who I loved more deeply than I thought possible telling me with all the passion and power she could muster that she hated me. Now I know she was just trying to vent her frustration and that all children say these kinds of things without really meaning them but still, at the moment I felt the pain of those words.

I can’t even imagine the pain of racial slurs, the torment of belittling language, the soul damage of condescending verbiage that women and minorities, the poor and outcast, the disabled and disenfranchised have had to endure. I have never been the recipient of such words. The closest I have ever come would be in seminary when a radical feminist vehemently lashed out at me for not good reason just because I was a male. Though her words caught me off guard and made me reflect on what I had said and done they did not call into question my basic humanity or my reality of being a beloved child of God.

Words may be inexact. They might be metaphors. They are only representations of thoughts, feelings and emotions but they still carry tremendous power. Think about Genesis 1, John 1, Micah 6, Isaiah 2, The Gettysburg Address, the “I have a Dream” speech, FDR the day after Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy’s inauguration speech, Barak Obama’s first inauguration speech, and the thousands, millions, billions of songs, poems, sermons, speeches, commentaries, editorials, reflections, novels, biographies, memoirs, diaries, and any other media that presents words that have impacted and influenced you, our society and our world and you get a sense of the power of words.

My hope is that I will pay attention to all the words I use. That I will try and make sure the words I speak and write do no harm. That they at least don’t damage and at best repair people. I see the wisdom in my mom’s advice to count to 25 before you react. I understand the wisdom behind the counsel to reread an email and let it sit for a moment before you send it. I have come to appreciate the pause before speaking. Now all I have to do is get my mind and mouth to follow this sage guidance.

I can’t help but wonder if some of the candidates just don’t hear what they say. Can they really mean what they are saying? And if they do, how can people of faith and good consciences support such hateful, demeaning and downright bigoted people? I heard a Baptist pastor on NPR defending a candidate because he would help bring our country back to good biblical values even thought he wasn’t a good Christian. I thought was he hearing what I was hearing? As we move deeper into this election cycle the words will only get harsher and the speech more inflammatory. Hateful and harmful things will be said and written. My hope is that somehow we can find a way to rise above the polluted festering pile of damaging verbiage to a more respectful and decent level of discourse. History has not shown me much reason to expect my hope to come true but as they say, hope springs eternal.

Dear God, help us all to pay attention to our words. Help me to work hard to keep my words in check. May what I say and write build people up, help people out and not be damaging to another. Amen.

Words

 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.  - Psalms 19:14 (NRSV)

As the various news stories and issues of the week swirled around in my head today – constitutional requirements, cell phone encryption, privacy, toxic air, living wage, etc – one thing seemed to pull at my attention, words. Words are really fascinating when you stop and think about them. I mean all they really are, are a bunch of letters strung together in a particular way that we have assigned some kind of meaning and significance to. The history of writing has words range from triangular indentations in clay, to hieroglyphic symbols, to strange markings, to stylized pictographic images to all the alphabets of all the languages on earth.

Remembering back to our school days, how we were taught to break a word down and look for the root words to try and discover its meaning, looking up words in a dictionary and reading the various meanings and uses of a word, and learning how words often got their meanings. I also remember how hard it was to try and define certain words. Try to tell someone what wet is. All you can do is say what it is not – dry – or explain how wetness feels or works but you cannot define wet. The same goes for colors and emotions and darn near everything else we use words to describe.

Add to the fact that words are just symbolic representations, metaphors for things we see, touch, feel and experience the fact that words change their meanings. Words like “gay” and “cool” have had their meanings changed by use, time and circumstance. Often buried in the definition are the less used and utilized meanings of the word but it more common use is listed first and it can really be different from its meaning in the past. Words and language itself are really living things.  As times change as situations and circumstances arise, as new discoveries are made and as new generations experience things for themselves the words change or new words are invented. Words evolve.

I find the recently revived argument about the US Constitution to be a classic example of how some of us just don’t see that all of life, thought, theology, science, arts and creation changes and evolves. Things today are not the same as they were ten thousand years ago, a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, or even a day ago. It is just plain wrong to think that the words we used in a document written in 1787 in a society and world vastly different from our own can possibly mean the same thing today.

Take for example slavery, a reality in US society; it was accepted and generally expected as a viable part of the economy. The Constitution was written in that environment, in that reality. It could not handle the changes that came about in the mid-1800’s so an amendment was needed, a change to the original document, its words and language in order to keep it relevant for a changing nation. Even the original Constitution had to be changed within three years of its passing with the addition of the Bill of Rights. And we all know that the founders could never have envisioned a world of electronic surveillance, spy satellites, global computer networks and the reality we find ourselves living in.  What the Constitution said in 1787, 1791, 1865, and 1992 cannot be forever understood as locked in the time of its writing because the vary words themselves change over time.

What we can do is interpret them. We can try and glean the intent of the original words. We can explore why they were written in the way they were written in order to gain a sense and an educate opinion about what they meant and how they could be applied to a very different reality. It is the same as with the Bible. It is ludicrous to think that somehow the very words used in the writing of the Bible stopped evolving and changing their meanings. They haven’t and neither have we. Words, their meaning and significance change, shift, evolve and come to mean new things in different settings. Our job as users of words is to constantly be exploring the tides of change to get at the core of what is trying to be communicated. Why do you think the saying is “a picture is worth a thousand words?”

Dear God, thank you for language, for words and for their ever evolving nature. Help us give up our idolatry of words. Free us to see words as they are metaphors, expressions of our thoughts, ideas, dreams, visions and reality. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, my God! Amen.

God and History

But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses. Exodus 9:12 (NRSV)

I just finished reading the book Lincoln’s Battle with God by Stephen Mansfield. He is the author of such books as The Faith of Barack Obama and The Search for God and Guinness. It was an interesting summary of the life of Abraham Lincoln and his lifelong struggle with faith and God. I can’t do justice to his argument and sources in this Musing but I came away convinced that the Atheist President as not an atheist, he was a man struggling with a concept of God and faith that did not fit with his life experience and the circumstances he found himself in. The Christian Church and theology of his time did not provide him with the tools he needed to make sense of life. It also did not help that many practitioners were inauthentic and their faith did not stand up to the tests of reason or compassion.

One conclusion Mansfield comes to is that Lincoln become convinced that the Civil War was in some way God’s judgment upon the United States of America for our sanctioning human abuse in the slave trade. I am not advocating that this view is theologically correct. What I am willing to say is that given the times, the circumstances and the theological perspectives he had to choose from Lincoln made a choice that was necessary for his peace of mind and decision making as President. I would like to think that if Lincoln were alive today he would more than likely come out at a different place theologically. I think he would see the Civil War as the consequence of human action and our willful disregard for God’s desire for humanity and creation. It wasn’t divine judgment; it was natural consequences for humanity ignoring the fundamental foundation of creation – distributive justice, equity for all creation.

I think the argument can be made that where the Bible portrays historical power struggles, wars, etc as God’s intervention or lack thereof you could just as easily portray them as the natural consequences of humanity’s willfully ignoring God’s desire for human society and human and creation interaction. The Ancient and Modern state of Israel sits in a geographical place that makes it unavoidable for imperial or strategic control to be desired and their place to be a battleground for these interests. Add to this the modern reality that three of the world’s religions (about 4 billion people) all claim it as their own holy site and you have a perfect mix for human conflict and the consequences of choices made by the people who are in power in this world and in this troubled piece of real estate.

Dietrich Bonheoffer made the argument during his imprisonment, before his execution for his part in the assignation attempt on Hitler, that God was dead. Not that God, the divine beyond our ability to fully comprehend, was dead but that the human construct of God as the source of all that happens, the cause of dramatic world conflicts and the source of natural disasters was dead. The shear destructive force of the allied bombings of Germany and their wholesale destruction of all things and all life convinced Bonheoffer that we humans could not blame things on God. That natural forces and human created consequences were to blame and that ultimately God was grieved by what we humans do when we get out of step with God’s desire for creation.

I think Lincoln’s struggle with God is a mirror for the struggle many are having with the traditional portrayal of God today. I think his battle with the accepted ways of understanding God and human activity speaks to the battle many are having with the institutional church (synagogue, mosque, temple, etc). People find what is being offered as inauthentic and they cannot stand up to the tests of reason and compassion. People believe in God. People desire to live faithful lives. They just don’t feel that most of the contemporary expressions of faith echo what they know of God and they sure don’t reflect their desire for a world of justice, compassion and peace. We have to stop blaming God and start accepting the consequences of our choices and choose to go about things differently as individuals and as nations.

Dear God, help me to see that what I say and do has consequences and that what nations and corporations do have consequences. Wherever possible, help me to make the choices that reflect your desire for creation. May justice reign on earth and may there be equity for all. Amen.