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.
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