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![[Photo of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair]](tony_blair.jpg)
As this issue of Christis comes out, the General Election will already be a fading memory. But whilst it’s still ongoing and (vaguely) interesting, there is a little something that fascinates me about politicians and their attendant hangers-on. It’s the way they use that clever spoken-word trick of Hidden Capital Letters, giving Special Emphasis to those words and phrases they want us, the General Public, to listen to Extra Carefully:
“We truly aim for a Government that is For The Many, Not The Few”
“It’s a Real Chance for Real Change, you know!”
“This is, in many ways, the Last Chance to Keep The Pound, as I keep telling people”
What are they on about? With repetition, these words seem to take on an implicit, special meaning beyond the rather banal one we’d give them. Mere issues like ‘meaning’ go out the window. If we were Part of The Team, On Their Side, we’d understand, they suggest. Yet they just look as if they’re alien visitors using our language to convey strange thoughts from another planet. It’s all a little pointless to us mere mortals, and doesn’t address the issues we want to hear them talk about.
But we all do this, every last one of us. It seems to be a natural part of using language, particularly in a fractured social environment like a modern university. Each of us is part of a myriad number of cliques, groups and subgroups, all with their own jargon and Hidden Capital Letters. I’m sure you can think of examples. Christians particularly do it, and this is where I personally get a bee in my bonnet:
“Oh yes, I think Interfaith work is terribly important”
“Would you give your Testimony?”
“I think it vital that we Network Ecumenically”
“Are you Saved?”
Annoying, isn’t it? It’s most annoying when jargon like this proliferates and takes over, when every word is being made to do the work of ten or more to convey those hidden meanings that we might not get if we’re not part of the Special People Who Understand. It’s alienating. There are — as Tony Blair would say — Real Issues beneath the surface, but the repeated buzz-words (which we don’t always understand fully ourselves) make it harder to get hold of them. And we can’t always tell if we’re at it ourselves!
It is always a risk — whatever social surrounding they’re in, whatever tongue they’re speaking — that every Christian of whatever trend will be at some time perceived by others, even other Christians, as communicating in a meaningless interior language of pious cliches and nothing-words. If so, we come across as arrogant and irrelevant. This is a danger that must be combated and watched out for. After all, we want to articulate the key concepts of our faith in a way that gives credit to the God we believe gives us this desire to communicate. Don’t we?
Three Christian traits — forgiveness, patience with others, and the ability to listen to what they’re saying — have the capacity to make all of us better communicators. And if we are better communicators, we can convey all the more clearly that we believe there to be something real at the base of our faith, that it’s not just ‘all talk’. I say this not as a shining paragon, but as one of the world’s worst offenders here, as someone who fails and tries and fails again in the attempt to develop a personal language and approach about God that is free of arrogance, lazy thinking and reductionism. ‘Reductionist’ language can be defined as linking ideas together without the necessary intermediate explanation, so that much of the concept being explained is actually lost or obscured.
And reductionism is exactly the crux of the issue. When the urge to speedily convey complex concepts is so great, because we care so much about them, we often kid ourselves that we can pack all that vast amount of meaning into one or two short, special words or phrases. See above for examples of what I mean. This is quite a natural human instinct and it does aid communication within tightknit communities. But there’s another word for all this. Code. It’s all very well when those whom we converse with share some understanding of how to decode our words, but when they don’t? Oh dear. If we don’t explain, we lose trust. If we don’t listen to the signs that those we meet and try to talk to don’t understand, we lose relevance to those around us. If we’re not patient and forgiving with those who are trying to understand our code, we lose out on the chance of winning friends. The upshot of all three is that we lose the argument very quickly indeed, far quicker than we might think, because we lose listeners. And this applies both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of Christianity.
As well as forming a barrier to explaining faith to those who do not share it, this natural phenomenon of language usage divides the faith. Different branches of the faith which have grown apart, as well as occasionally having different understandings of doctrine, express these in their own theological languages or codes. Worse, people very rarely stop to think that those from other branches of Christianity might not have the tool kit to decode what they’re saying. There is often a basic, naive conception that if other people are Christians, they will Understand. If not, perhaps they’re not Christians, or at least not right or sound Christians. I have also heard it argued, and used to argue myself, that if we have faith, it does not matter how we express ourselves, as long as we ‘mean it’. People will ultimately get what we mean, and of course, since this is about ‘Truth’, God will take care of making sure that people understand. We don’t have to concern ourselves overly much about precision. Again, as long as it’s all fundamentally right, who cares about a few rough edges?
Perhaps I’m coming across as a grumpy pedant. Is this just a concern with process and not content? Am I letting irritations with style and mannerisms come between me and other Christians? The answer to both these is “well … sort of”. But surely it is a real aspect of everyday human interaction to find such verbal idiosyncrasies irritating and alienating. As we befriend people, we learn to lose the traits that most irritate them, and develop our own, mutual language of friendship. Faith in Jesus is about getting to know a real, alive, person, right? We’re supposed to model all our relationships on aspects of our relationship with Jesus, right? Then getting language usage right is surely a matter — whatever Christian or non-Christian jargon-group you belong to — that cuts right to the heart of communicating and understanding that ultimate Christian code-word, the one that’s being made to carry so many different implicit meanings it might fall over.
For me, there is an immediacy and human warmth that has to be present in the gospel and its telling, passed on from real person to real person through normal processes of human interaction and friendship. It seems summed up in a masterly passage from one of the early Christian letters:
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life … We … declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.
From 1 John 1:1–4
If this is so, and if the God revealed in the gospel (“good news”) of Jesus knows us so intimately that he is closely and personally “acquainted with all [our] ways” (Psalm 139), then I would argue that we fail in our quest to reflect this God in our own lives if we let language make a barrier between ourselves and those we meet. If we’re trying to show that divine warmth and accessibility mentioned above, we must be careful to avoid the elitism, arrogance and lack of care that can be displayed in, or misinterpreted from, coded language and lazy thinking. This is no easy task, but the problem of needlessly complicating and codifying our language is one we must be aware of, and one the Biblical writers were both aware of and prey to themselves (check out 2 Peter 3:15–16!). The writer of the book of James is particularly keen, in a variety of ways, to advise us to have caution in every aspect of our speaking and communicating, lest we cause hurt to ourselves and others:
For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistake in speaking is perfect … How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.
From James 3:1–11
I don’t want to engage in detailed biblical exposition here, just to suggest points of departure for thinking about these issues which are involved in freeing our language — and our expression of the God we claim to love and serve — from lazy thinking. Perhaps most importantly, we should perhaps try to understand the ideas we try to convey — even the very “basics” of our faith — before we express them in conversation, and not after. If we care about our faith, we should be prepared to think about our faith, rather than repeating the half-understood words of others. Think about it. Listen to yourself talk. And above all, Mind Your Language!
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Last modified: 25th November 2005