say what?

So this post's title has to do with a question that was posed to me on facebook today. I'll get to that in a second. 

First, let me just say....

KASE WAS AWESOME. 

thank you God. 

Not only were many students and leaders re-energized and, yes, empowered to lead in their different ministry settings, but I was personally reminded this year of why I signed up to be a part of KASE in the first place. Once again, the simple recipe of bringing students together from various contexts and investing in them as bearers and receivers of the good news of Jesus Christ brought about some amazing results! 

Looking forward to 2012 (especially now that we've got a nice little "commando squad" of pastors and leaders here that now know and want to be a part of the vision of this conference)

Now to think of a new name for it...

***

Okay, back to the title. Here's the question: 

I'd like to submit a question. Me and...we're debating the significance of words and their meaning. It started out with...saying that it would be bad (Blasphemous) to repeat certain chants and things which are promoted in yoga. But I asked about it and said that it didn't really matter if the person saying such things had no knowledge of their meaning, or didn't assosiate those words with their meaning. The argument extended into if this applied to swears as well. So, what do you think?

Great question! 

One deserving of more than a few minutes of thought and writing. So I'll save my full answer for tomorrow. 

For now let me boil down the question's key components: 

• What determines the significance/badness/goodness of the spoken word? 
• Are certain words/sounds still significant/bad/good if the listener/speaker does not understand their meaning? 
• What do we mean by "significant"? Good/bad by what standard? 

In "say what?" part 2, we'll dig into these topics and more!