Christianese.tv

It's five minutes before midnight, and I am determined to put in a few minutes pounding keys on my laptop in order to produce a blog entry. I won't let this writerly paralysis get the best of me! My internal critic has a death grip on my wrist, and unless I am reeking of confidence, he (or she or it--internal critics are probably better lumped with things than persons), I say again, he won't let me crank out a word. Well, to that I say: pshaw. And I'll trot out a little trick that I've long recommended to neophyte writers: if you're having trouble writing, then write about why you're having trouble. It will probably be therapeutic to organize your thoughts about why you're having trouble writing, and--who knows?--as a result of turning the writerly gears a few revolutions in a highly self-conscious and artificial way, you might find that the writerly engine turns over and suddenly you've got your motive power back. If nothing else happens except that words get laid on the page, then at least you're getting practice employing syntax, vocabulary, grammar, and the most elementary rules of composition. And versus doing jack squat and feeling miserable about the absence of writing, moaning about your paralysis and composing well-formed sentences is pretty darn good, in my opinion.

So what I want this blog to be is a place where I can explore the intersection of Christian faith and the English language. I guess language in general--I'm not all tied up on the English language in particular--but since I know English best, and since I know only about the ways that Christianity and English influence each other, it just happens that the Christianity/English crossroads is all I really can write about. I'm sure there are interesting things going on in other languages; in fact, I'm kind of interested right this moment all of a sudden in what's going on in the Spanish language when it comes to expressions of Christian faith. (Did you know that Spanish is the fastest-growing language in the United States?) But I have to stick with what I know. And that's being a Christian and being a speaker and a writer of English.

That intersection of faith and language can be examined all kinds of which ways. But there are a few specific ways that appeal to me particularly and that I think I'd be good at handling. For one, it's the exploration of Christianese. Ah, Christianese. It's the specialized language that Christians use with one another. Some Christianese words have come about as reactions to the non-Christian culture around us, and other Christianese words have come from phrases or keywords in the Bible, which is understandably a strong influencer of how we use language. There's the popular saying What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD); I wonder if on some level Christians don't wonder How Would Jesus Say This? Jesus himself used specialized language that marked him as part of a special crowd. Language like "Son of Man" was from certain parts of the Jewish prophetic tradition. And he spoke in parables that didn't always make sense until he or one of his followers had clued you in on the deeper meaning. So Christianese isn't bad. And this blog isn't about criticizing people who use Christianese. You could say that the Bible is written in Christianese. There was this one time during Jesus's ministry when he told a Jewish rabbi that he would have to be born again. The rabbi, a well-respected man named Nicodemus, wasn't quite sure what Jesus meant, and he played off his confusion by cracking wise about a grown man trying to crawl back up into the womb in order to be born again. Point being, Jesus said stuff like "born again" and it wasn't immediately clear to the uninitiated what he was talking about.

So that's one topic I want to explore: Christianese.

Another topic is song lyrics in Christian songs. Probably I will focus my attention on the so-called contemporary Christian genre. Hymns are often simply lifted psalm texts, and what I'm interested in is the Biblicality of Christian lyrics. Christian songs can have a great beat, and mellifluous and melodic lyrics, but what is the song really saying? I wonder about songs that seem to promote beliefs about Jesus or the church that aren't true in light of what Scripture tells us.

One example of this is a song called "Mysterious Ways" whose performer I can't recall at the moment. The song's chorus goes "God works in mysterious ways" and some of the verses go along the lines of "when you walk past a tree and it rustles in the wind, how do you know that isn't God telling you hello?" I'm probably infantilizing some of the song, but the point is that the song promotes an understanding of God as a remote and inscrutable figure. Now it's true and it's Biblical that God's ways are above our ways and that even the foolishness of God (if there were such a thing!) is wiser than the supreme wisdom of man. So it's true that there are things to God that we don't understand. But in all the ways in which we have to interact or depend on God, there is clear Biblical teaching. Where things get more, shall we say, mysterious is when we move off the beaten path of faith-in-action and try to obtain answers for any old question we come up with. So I have some concerns about songs that emphasize the mysterious and incomprehensible identity of God. I mean, as far as God making himself understandable goes, he did cause a library of books to be written that explains his motives and goals with regard to his interaction with the human race. I'm talking about the Bible!

There was one more topic that I wanted to mention. Now what was it? I guess it was probably just the topic of being a Christian and using my writing to glorify God and teach and encourage the church.

Oh, I found that "Mysterious Ways" song. It was by Kim Hill. You can google for it if you want. I'm not going to analyze the lyrics in any kind of serious detail tonight. I'm too tired!