- What determines the badness/goodness/significance of the spoken word?
I'm going to divide this one up into two questions:
- What determines the goodness/badness of a spoken word or phrase?
- What significance, if any, do spoken words/phrases have?
We'll tackle the first one today:
For one following Jesus Christ, goodness/badness of anything is in reference to what either helps us to follow, or hinders us and other followers from following him (or flat out is running in the opposite direction). Specifically this takes shape in the rule of love: loving another as him/herself.
It's important to realize that this points us away from asking "is it okay if I do _________?". When you're in a relationship to God you're not seeking to do the least amount of good and greatest amount of selfish behavior God will let you get away with. Relationships don't work like that. Friendships and love don't work like that. When you're in a real relationship, you go all out seeking the best for the other.
When it comes to language then, the question is: how can I follow Christ with every word that I speak?
Sound extreme? Well let's put it this way: would it be extreme for a husband to ask, "How can I show love to my wife in everything that I do and say?" No, we'd just call that love. Real relationships don't look for a line of acceptable behavior. They seek the greatest good that they can do, love that they can show and run in that direction.
So let's go back to a person hypothetically repeating some kind of cultic chant or cussing up a storm without any knowledge of the meaning of those words...I think my question would be how they ever got into that situation if they were pursuing Christ with every word that they spoke. I mean...how would saying a bunch of gibberish that you don't understand ever make sense as a thing to do if you were trying to follow Christ with every word?
So, in short: Does it matter if someone is saying a chant or using foul language, even if they have no idea what they're saying? Yes, because there's no way (at least as far as I can see) that doing so would be part of them either a) following Christ and/or b) loving others as themselves.
image from: http://djames.ca/preacher-mix
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