Language is a powerful thing. I think we underestimate its power regularly in our lives.
Christians often scoff at this, because it sounds like magical thinking: manifesting things doesn’t work, however many copies The Secret has sold. Some charismatic circles go the opposite way and get hyper vigilant over it, scolding friends for ‘speaking something over themselves’ as though doom follows speaking of it.
God is a speaking God. The Bible opens with Yahweh the speaker, in the beginning ‘God said.’ Jesus is the divine word, ‘let there be light.’ The fact that in both Hebrew and Greek the same word describes the Spirit as breath and wind helps us see that the triune God is a speaker who speaks his word using his breath.
Not only does the creation account teach us that God is a speaker whose words happen, but our trinitarian theology helps us see that ‘God as speaker’ is one the analogies the Bible uses to help us understand who Yahweh is. It also helps us, by the by, to notice that God is acting everywhere in the Old Testament, not just the obvious times. If God speaks then all three persons are in view—and of course the doctrine of inseparable operations teaches us that we don’t even need to think like that: God is united and God acts as God inseparably.
God is a speaker. It’s his nature. His words become things. That isn’t magic, it’s the nature of divinity. He cannot tell a lie and I wonder if God did say something that is not then the whole of reality shifts on its axis because what he has said must now be. That is, perhaps, a fanciful way of thinking about it.
Our words work the same way.
This immediately sounds like word of faith teaching; I want to explicitly deny that. We do not need to name things and claim them in order to see them happen. We just ask our Father for them, and he will say yes to the thing that we really ought to have asked for.
Instead, what I mean is that the words we use create the categories that we think in. They open and close doors for people, usually subconsciously. If we always call something a certain thing then we will soon struggle to think of it in different categories. This principle is why politicians are so keen to define what something is called and why propaganda is such a powerful tool of states. If you can define what something is called you define what it is: our words are creative.
You might want to push back and say that it doesn’t automatically make it so. To take the most obvious example, just because you say that this person is a woman, it doesn’t mean that your statement aligns with reality. This is true. I actually think this rather proves my point. It seems like we’re turning the corner on gender ideology’s grip on our nation—though I am loathe to speak too soon—but the grip has been strong because we’ve been told the catchphrases so often that they become the categories we think in even when it doesn’t align with reality.
We should speak in line with reality. Our words will have more weight when we do. Even when we don’t, they still plough furrows in the mind. It is difficult for our thoughts to flow against the furrows.
This is why thinkers like to define new terms for what they’re saying, they are concerned that the terms we currently have don’t adequately describe reality as they are trying to paint it. This is why Christians who decry ‘labels’ for denominations and schools of theology are naïve: we need them otherwise we can’t think about these matters with clarity. Labels are good because they’re names; true names are gifts from God.
When I call myself a eucharismatic I am saying that these two things you thought were separate are not, they belong together. That redefines the furrows so that over time the thought can flow in different directions. It needs more work to be carefully defined, but the terms initially work as ‘meme warfare’ to highlight a problem with the way we separate things.
Every thinker or writer ends up doing this, attempting to define terms. It’s the act of Adam in the garden naming the animals, and it’s probably also the sin of pride. When done well it clarifies and opens things up.
The average church
The average pastor reading this doesn’t think of themselves in those terms though, they aren’t trying to come up with terms or definitions. However, they do decide what words to use all the time. I don’t just mean what they say in their preaching, though that is key, but the exact words they chose to describe things in notices, in emails, in naming events, and a thousand things beside.
Diligence in language matters, because a lack of diligence will lead to something being created that you weren’t intending to create. Calling something the wrong thing and assuming people will know what you mean is playing with fire: they won’t know what you mean and it’s an evens chance that the things morphs to become what you keep calling it. You may not even notice it’s happening if you aren’t attentive to it. Craft your language, you’re a phrase-monger, a man of words.
This doesn’t have to be a difficult task, just call things what they are or what you are hoping they will be. Be clear about that difference too. Your words will make a reality, and if it’s in accordance with actual reality your people will flourish.
No, ok, it’s not that easy, but Jesus will tend his flock.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
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