Human race has been endowed with incredible God-like ability of expressing ourselves through language. Articulating his or her first word is primary developmental milestone in every child’s life. This represents only the beginning of a sacred journey intended to teach us to use words creatively, to speak well of our Maker and His creation, and to discover appropriate ways and context for expressing our innermost thoughts, desires, needs and boundaries.
Words can be incredibly powerful. They can inspire, impart life, meaning and direction to our existence. They can also start wars and revolutions and end marriages and friendships. Every day words are used to deceive and manipulate, to reveal what should remain hidden and hide what should be exposed.
Words also can be incredibly impotent. The unbelievable proliferation of words in our global culture of blogging, social networking and minute-by-minute news updates has created unprecedented word hyperinflation, a bulging, ever-increasing river of loud noise that says nothing or at least rarely anything worth hearing. E-technology has allowed us to create links, to cut and paste long quotes with just a few clicks of a mouse and dump them thoughtlessly into the churning river of verbiage flooding the banks of our lives. None of us knows quite how to deal with so much well-intentioned at best and mean-spirited at its worst linguistic pollution.
The problem with words is that they are easy to say and in the cut-and-paste world of Internet, even easier to write. Almost anyone can do that. But, engaging our mind, our moral person inside, understanding the context of our expression and our (already overloaded, I might add) audience before we do our dumping is altogether different story. In a moral universe, I am responsible for what I put out there. I am held accountable, justified and/or condemned by my own words. Perhaps what we need is a little (or a LOT) less of empty shells of sounds and letters, void of content and meaning, and more of ‘word becoming flesh and living among us’?
That, of course, is much easier said then done.
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. John 1:14
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