The Use and Abuse of Words...

We abuse what we overuse. We overuse words. Like the squeaky door or the leaky faucet, we notice it at first. But with continued neglect we can learn to ignore it. So are words. They have meaning. They have value. But their overuse can dilute their power. As a preacher I am jealous for words. They are all I have to describe and communicate that which is really beyond description and communication. Their power is important to me. Their abuse makes my job more difficult. Barbara Brown Taylor in her amazing little book, When God is Silent, uses words quite effectively to describe what I am writing about. She says,

“In our lifetimes, language has taken a terrible hit…There is first the assault of consumerism, which forces words to make promises they can’t keep…words are chosen not for their truthfulness, but for their seductiveness. What they mean is beside the point. What they seem to mean is all that counts…

While it is really a variety of consumerism, journalism has launched its own assault on language…The attack is not so much on the truthfulness of words as it is on their longevity. At my house, pounds of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are tossed aside with whole sections unread. My guilt over this is softened by the knowledge that the newsprint will have a second life. Once a month I haul it to the county recycling center, where it is shredded into cheap bedding for local chicken houses. After the chickens are through with it, I am told, it is feed to cows who somehow benefit from the nutrients in it. That yesterday’s forty-eight-point headline becomes tomorrow’s cow food is a process that is as pragmatic as it is strange. The moral is that there is no sense getting attached to the news, not to the realities a reporter’s words represent. How did that community recover from the hurricane? What happened to the children after their mother died of AIDS?...Don’t ask. Just let it go. There will be more stories tomorrow that are just as compelling. The word is transitory, cheap….

A third assault on the nobility of language is the sheer proliferation of words with which most of us are faced each day…The words keep coming at us through an ever-expanding variety of media – so many words that some days it sounds as it we live our lives against a wall of constant noise…The most unfortunate side-effect of all the noise is that many of us have become hard of hearing. We learn to filter out words that are not necessary to our lives the same way we learn to sleep in a house near railroad tracks. Our brains protect us from the daily barrage of words by increasing our resistance to them.” (p. 9-14)

Taylor’s point is that we stop listening and start filtering. We don’t hear the words. Does it bother anyone that we say we “love” ice cream, we “love” American Idol, and we “love” God? We use words without thinking about their meaning. I don’t have a way out of this dilemma, I’m better at identifying problems than solving them, but I think we have to agree that in a world drenched with words, the danger of meaning being washed away is real.

A couple stands before me, the minister, as they make bold promises. Vows about sickness and health, wealth and poverty, till death do us part. My biggest challenge at that moment is to help them see that the words they utter have deep and profound meaning. They are not the same words the used car salesman uses. It’s easy to ignore his words, deadly to ignore theirs. We have to learn to speak more slowly, more deliberately, with meaning. Perhaps the doorway to re-valuing our words is to take some time to sit in silence. To reflect on what we say. To listen to what is being said to us. Just as fasting helps us to value our food, a fast from words may bring clarity to our speaking and our hearing.

For a preacher it means realizing that most of the time less is more. (Is that a hearty AMEN I hear from the blogosphere?) Sometimes in our passion to communicate the profound, we trivialize it with too many words. The beauty of God is somehow reduced to a product that we are hawking to the world, trying to convince them that this is finally the one thing that will really make their lives better. The Psalmist said, “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.” (Ps. 46:10)

The irony that I am writing a long blog entry to communicate this is not lost on me. But my hope is that this will make you think about words. Just maybe it will inspire you to take some time for silence. To retrain your ear to hear what you say and what is said to you.

If we get in the habit of ignoring words, there is great danger that the Word made flesh will pass us by without our noticing.