The Miracle of Words

"In the beginning was the WORD, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1 (The Bible, NRV)

“She’s totally normal. All her parts work right. It’s just that her words haven’t come in yet,” said the older sister of her new sibling who was happily gurgling and wiggling and staring at the two older girls from her crib. It was her explanation to another preschooler who asked why the baby couldn’t talk yet. 

Communicating through sensible words is a profound miracle that many people, perhaps most, do not appreciate. Without this ability, which as far as we know, is confined to human beings of this planet, we could not have accomplished most of what has distinguished human beings as the pinnacle of God’s Creative activities. Without sensible, translatable, language we would have no way to record our accomplishments, memories, discoveries, or anything that our posterity could find useful for continuing to survive and perhaps progress inside the dome of nature; a realm that can be a harsh, unforgiving place to reside.

In addition to the usefulness of words employed for the purpose of survival, much of the artful beauty in our personal lives and in universal human culture depends on words. Poetry, songs, descriptions of sunsets, mountain ranges, and all the other awe inspiring things we want to express or describe to our fellow, sentient beings, all depend on words to portray.

That’s why we honor words in so many ways. We give the most gifted word crafters awards such as the Nobel Prize for Literature and other prizes which convey to them that their words have made our lives better. We hold contests among children to honor the ones who can spell the most words correctly. It creates awe in us when we discover that some of our human peers are able to memorize vast quantities of words out of literary sources such as Shakespeare, the Bible, or other complex literature and holy Scripture. We admire and enrich those artists who are able to orally present words, through singing or acting, that lift our spirits to a higher plane of consciousness, if only for a moment or so.

That’s why it baffles some of us that our society has become so jaded by words—so careless about using words, hearing words, or understanding how to use words appropriately. There are so many examples of this, but I dare not select any, because I don’t want anyone to think I’m picking on them or their politics or religion or favorite entertainer. This problem is far larger than any limited selection of individuals could delineate. It’s a malady that has pervaded our culture to the degree, that many Americans disparage and insult those souls whose practice it is to verbally communicate with sophistication, enlightened vocabulary, and evidence of classic education. The majority of our society seems biased against those with “too much education.” 

The problem of which I speak is exacerbated by this current society’s fascination or obsession with crude, vulgar language. It has become expected, common, yet, somehow, still amusing to most people today for a speaker to sprinkle large numbers of “four-letter words” in anything he or she is communicating. It’s apparently okay, to them, to use these words anywhere, now, except where it’s not okay. They use them in any combination of mixed company, aloud in a park full of families or in a grocery store or department store, speaking with one’s fellow customers. However, strangely, it’s common for the same people to employ hypocrisy when it comes to using such language in their places of worship. If it’s okay to use crude language with your children, grandparents, fellow workers, shopping at Target, or wherever, why is it not okay in a building where worship takes place? Or is the better question, why is it okay that our culture has become so uncultured and impolite that we no longer respect proper language or the people around us who would prefer that we ‘make conversation great again’?

Even some people who speak quite profanely, and seem to prefer using bad grammar even when they know correct grammar, enjoy the beautiful, lofty, elegant words of poetry written by a wonderful wordsmith. Why has our culture sunk to this sad level of glorifying poor language? More Americans are educated today than at any other time in our history as a nation. A higher percentage of people have been taught to read, write, use correct grammar, spell correctly, and pronounce words correctly than ever before, yet, if you listen to almost any group of people talking about almost anything, you’ll notice a disrespect for the language and the community of communicators jointly using the language. I don’t understand why we’ve come to this as a nation.

Words have meaning. Words are powerful. People have killed each other in informal fights and formal duels over words. In this twenty-first century world, our use of words has become sloppy, ungoverned, immature, and even tragic.

Most tragic of all, our national leaders, coming from a long, historic line of some of the most eloquent speakers in history, are now in the habit of making speeches using impolite, rash, dissolute, ignorant language. If you read the speeches of Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and almost any historic, national American leader, going back to the beginning foundations of this country, you'll see that our leaders did not speak to us in vulgar fashion. How ever they may have spoken in private, they spoke with culture, eloquence and respect for the people they governed when they spoke officially, in public. If you check out the public speeches of these historic leaders, I'm confident you'll see that this is a modern phenomenon, born out of a new laxity toward proper human expression. 

When John, the Gospel writer, chose a way to refer to the miracle of Christ as one who exists beyond time, in Eternity, identified in a mysterious way as both God and human, he chose to call him “the WORD.” He could have used any word, but he chose “the WORD.” Some people, somewhere along the history of modern Christendom, began thinking incorrectly, that “the Word of God” is the Bible. That has never been true. “The WORD of God” is Christ Himself. I think John chose to identify Christ as the WORD of God, because there is no other word in the human language that points to the miracle of human creation more than that we have the ability to think with, use, communicate in, and express our loftiest thoughts in words. No other natural beings can do this as far as we know.

If John could see how today's generation is communicating—how we are disrespecting language itself—I think he might have chosen another symbol for the miracle of the Nature of Christ.

Let’s try to do better.

A brief summary of my professional history for those who don't know me -- Robert Clemons, BA, MDiv, MA, is a retired USAF Chaplain (Lt Col) and retired UMC Pastor, the author of two published novels and numerous articles, a former editor of the USAF Chaplain Service official magazine (The Leading Edge) and speech writer for the USAF Chief of Chaplains, a former Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy in two universities, and a Christian witness who struggles daily with getting the message from God's Holy Spirit as right as he possibly can in the midst of his human frailties and burdens. His novels, The Four Rivers of Eden and The Hiroshima Agenda are available at www.amazon.com in both Paperback and E-Book and at other major book publishers in Paperback.