Words Matter
Words matter.
The opening scene in Hebrew scripture reads, “And Elohim said…” What was voiced in that moment magnificently burst forth the unfolding of creation, both seen and unseen, at the behest of each, carefully selected, powerfully spoken, unchanging — word. And Elohim saw that everything created was, “Good”.
What marvels me is that this affirming acclamation of, “Good” was bestowed full-knowing the serpent, whom scripture describes as the most shrewd, subtle and sly of all the animals Elohim had made, was already listed in the playbill. We’ll just park that impending black hole for a future blog.
The first words uttered by the shifty, post-modern serpent were, “Is it true that Elohim said…?” In a cunningly successful ploy to deceive half of the people on the planet, the first recorded dialogue on Earth was a subtle, yet catastrophic usurping of truth by the raveling of — words.
Words were the first absolute attacked in the perfect Garden, and what ensued next was a cataclysmic havoc, disruption and mayhem our universe is still recovering from. Remember the law of first mention: Whenever you see the contorting and hapless repurposing of words so as to deceive — heed not the serpent, tread discerningly and be careful what you eat.
In today’s vernacular, when I hear sly pundits, politicians and activists say, “We need to have more conversations about these things”, I begin to circle looking for a serpent. For a citizenry to effectively communicate, there must be an agreed upon linguistic comprised of words which are clearly defined and agreed upon at the macro level. Otherwise, effective, precise dialogue can never be had at the micro level — where actual conversation takes place.
For the past four decades or so, we have had peer reviewed-only professors acting like poorly trained Mixologists, tossing disjointed words into their cocktail shaker and straining out terms our parents never heard of. Let us first take up the word, gender. In Western use since the 14th Century, there was nary a conflicting gesture as to its meaning; man or woman. About ten short years ago, the Happy Hour menu suddenly presented us with the prefixed-term “Cisgender”, which quickly gained some peripheral usage but carried with it an almost derogatory connotation.
Today, a quick perusal of, “The Goog” will return at least 112 distinct genders with definitions which begin with, “The feeling of…” From this turn of a word, we get amalgams like gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, gender-fluid, gender-expansive, gender-performative and the like. Please hear me: This is not a statement on the lives people live. I am critiquing the hijacking of language. Might a better approach be that we preserve the historically agreed-upon meaning of the original word and when there are qualified breakthroughs with new findings, we carefully craft new dialectics as opposed to recalibrating that which has long been settled? Either way, Judith Butler will surely pour me a shot of science-denying gender-phobia.
Next, let’s look at “Justice”. With Western usage dating back to the 12th Century and a broadly used biblical concept in the ancient scriptures, Justice is not only an expressive act of God but indeed an immutable, attributing characteristic: “The Lord is a God of justice”. (Isaiah) The original Hebrew word essentially means, “To rightly judge”. In a more common vernacular, “To get what one deserves”, remembering a judge renders verdicts of both innocence and guilt. However, in the late twentieth century, a plethora of qualifiers were tossed into the blender to entirely confuse the original meaning.
Ask a dozen people what Social Justice means and be prepared to get thirteen different answers. Again, to simply preserve the long-standing concept of the word is to plainly understand that justice blankets every corner of societal life and every facet of the human heart. The only reason to create terms like Climate Justice, Racial Justice, or Gender Justice is to entirely misunderstand the root word: Justice. To toss an additive ingredient into the Nutri-bullet is not only confusing, it diminishes and recedes the original meaning.
Notice how Federalist Paper No. 51 uses the term;
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it is obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
No confusion there.
The same heuristic can be applied with the word, privilege. The etymology also dates back to the 12th Century and we have generally held-fast to its originating meaning ever since. Precisely, the commonly anticipated definition relates to; favor, benefit or advantage. The verb form of the word does carry with it an inherent scaffolding of hierarchy, meaning, there are naturally some individuals who are stratified differently along the societal gradations of delineation. This is where the intersectionalists lose their faculties of rational consideration — perhaps another foreboding concept to be parked for now.
If you are curious like me, you may be familiar with Peggy McIntosh’s work in the early 20th Century. She is one of the early alewife’s to pour us one of the first tasty tumblers of, White Privilege. You would think one could find a tome of social science scholarship and proven psychological research for an anthropological finding such as this. Alas, her infamous paper is a mere bullet-list of assertions on a few sheets of stapled looseleaf.
Before I continue, please let me clarify: It is not to say there are no worthy discussion points in these newfangled concoctions. Privilege is an undeniably real and widely impactful societal factor worth careful examination and thoughtful consideration. However, by relegating it as the caboose on a newly concatenated, skin-based boxcar, we might consider turning the table and pose, “Is it true the serpent said…”, and leave that fruit on the tree.
These terms have flooded nearly every facet of our life; from our schools and universities, to politics and media and now wrought through corporate Human Resource departments under the guise of employee training. I am not saying these concepts hold no worthy pursuit. But, in quite recent cultural interaction, the newly-minted term, white privilege, is used almost exclusively as a cudgel while my supposition is; the general citizenry is left squinting to discern its precise definition and meaning. What I am bidding is: May we please shut the tap on these nascent potations for a moment in order to first gain rightful agreement on the terms of engagement?
The word “Racism” is a horrific term which describes one of the most hateful and destructive depravities of human thought or behavior. Racism is the belief in the superiority or inferiority of a person solely based on their skin color. It was not that long ago that everyone agreed on the meaning and severity of this gruesome word. However, progressive tapsters have once again added a qualifier which spawns endless debate where full agreement once resided.
“Systemic racism” portends that any resultant which yields racial inequality or worse, racial inequity, is the equivalent of racism. The historic, long standing goal of most minority groups has been equality. Whether it was women’s rights, gay rights, black rights or the like; the movements’ goal were for people to be treated equally and afforded equal opportunity to pursue life’s many offerings and potentialities of purpose. I think we can readily agree on that. However, the construct and goal of the term, “Equity” resides far in the distance, lying in wait at the finish line — a far-off destination zone where every participant must somehow break the tape at exactly the same moment.
Equity discards the genesis and journey of each person or group, yet demands a measured outcome where everyone ends up with equal standing. So before we even unpack the invisible knapsack of, “Systemic”, we are obligated to define the metrics of, “Equity”.
Equity can be quantified in a calvacade of modalities: Wealth, level of education, quality of health, locale, career, health care, property, social standing, etc. But again, this is not in terms of equality of opportunity or provisional offering to pursue these things but rather — equity in outcome. Equality; good. Equity; impossible.
The snag is; there is a myriad of reasons why humans don’t all end up with an equality of outcome. And even if it were possible, which strata are we measuring? Health? Income? Strength? Ability? Level of education? Net worth? Children who have both their mother and father living at home? Type of phone and cellular plan? The number of rooms in your home? Total number of friends? All of these? Some of these?
Equality of opportunity is an agreeable and achievable goal which has certainly displayed measurable progress in the past 60 years yet, progressivism sloughs off this progress and focuses solely on attainment of the elusive equality of outcome.
Getting back to the word systemic; by definition, it can never be relegated as a descriptor of what individual people may or may not think within the private confines of their own minds. No, systemic means there is an externally implemented, publicly accessible system which needs to be dismantled and uninstalled, such as laws, policies, regulations and published practices.
I was recently stretched to think differently watching a robust panel discussion of black pastors and intellectuals. It was highly valuable to hear perspectives from a different part of the country. But I was perplexed by a particular quote referencing fellow black people who would disagree with what they were saying. It was an example of, “White supremacy in a black body”. If this is accurate, we have some major un-wording to clean up. Next, they thoroughly excoriated Martin Luther King Jr. and snickered while hinting the vast majority of black people did not and do not support his mission and message. Weren’t the remaining institutional weapons of segregation, Jim Crow, legislated discrimination and job market inequalities finally abolished during the Civil Rights Movement thanks to his thoughtful, eloquent, God-centered leadership?
In the era of MLK Jr., the implementation of racism was still demonstrably systemic. But today, with the eradication of such laws and practices it seems a challenge to identify and isolate the remaining programs which still need to be uninstalled in today’s systems. Racism has not left us as there are tragically still racists among us. But, where are the metrics to substantiate the systemic prefixing? It’s an honest question.
Finally, cometh now the death blow of the fully qualified charge of systemic racism: Any participation in or acceptance of a system that yields said inequities makes one not only an active contributor and implicitly culpable - it makes you a racist. Worse yet, if you are not actively trying to destroy such a system, you are a virulent racist.
My stomach is wildly unsettled at this point because nothing about this is pleasing to write about. It is entirely possible that I’ve spent far too much time prayerfully listening, diligently researching and vigorously learning all I can about the substrate of these topics as opposed to settling for click-worthy memes, dis-informative soundbites and pedantic political parlance.
Progressive authors like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi have gained widespread notoriety for this essential thesis: Racism is made manifest in literally every situation and interaction, so it’s the duty of the Anti-racist to uncover and eradicate it.
Right on cue, the progressives hand us our next word scrabble; Anti-racist. It is no longer sufficient to not be racist. No, if you have never exuded racist behaviors, it may only prove the ignorance and depth of your racism. If you treat all people equally with due respect regardless of skin color, the DiAngelo cultists will push in all their chips, call your bluff and unmask your unconscious hatred and discomfort with ‘otherness’.
“The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' .... There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.” ~Kendi.
No. Today, if you are not an Anti-racist you are, in fact, a racist.
There is a maniacal brilliance in scooping up the English lexicon, shaking it in a Yahtzee cup, and splaying it across the tabletop of our culture like rock salt on ice. The result? That which was once firm and solid begins to dissipate and crack right under our feet. By confusing and disabling clear thought and debate via linguistic hegemony, we are being pummeled to believe the ominous, cultural dragons that were systematically slain at a great price in past generations, have been hiding alive and well in plain sight all along. There is no choice but to resurrect those same conversations which were put to grave long ago, unsheathe our swords, and begin wildly taking swipes at the mist dragons, only to realize the wounds being inflicted are not on a systemic behemoth; but upon one another.
I’ve been fairly fixated on exposing the leaven of the political spirit, particularly when I hear the church parroting back these boxcar-ed phrases. I have to ask: Are these kingdom-originating terms which will truly bring the unity we all long for? Or, might the serpent be stocking the produce section and serving up barely fermented libations again? Because the heavenly living waters of the Kingdom are intended to flow outward to dispense its leaven, salt and light to a broken world. When that flow is reversed and the church welcomes in the philosophies of the day, we risk a brackish, dimming, power-sapping outcome which generally leads to confusion and division.
Jesus said, “The words I speak are spirit and they are life.” May we agree to cease the proliferation of post-modern word salad and press in together to use words which are inspired by Spirit and inaugurated with abundant life. No one can quench the Spirit or degrade abundant life without having to answer to the immutable, Word of Life: The Logos. May we stop adding prefixes to words which already carry great meaning. May we stop adopting the suppositions of wisdom-less philosophers and shouting activists who don’t even know what Logos is, let alone Who it is.
Words matter.
