Say What? Part 3: The Meaning of the Spoken Word

This is the third in a three part series of posts that I'm writing in response to a question a member of United Life asked me several weeks ago. That question was, "...It started out with...saying that it would be bad (Blasphemous) to repeat certain chants and things...But I...said that it didn't really matter if the person saying such things had no knowledge of their meaning, or didn't assosiate [sic] those words with their meaning...So, what do you think?" 

The second part in this series tackled the first part of this question, "what determines the goodness/badness of a spoken word or phrase?" This post will tackle the second: What significance, if any, do spoken words/phrases have? 

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There's a lot of logic in assuming that words spoken without understanding have no significance. After all, would a word or phrase have any sort of meaning except through a speaker's understanding? For example: "замечательная женщина твоя матушка". To a speaker who doesn't know what those words mean, what significance could they possibly have? 

The answer, of course, is that we're forgetting the listener. When I was visiting Korea as a teenager many summers ago, my cousin taught me all kinds of bad words. It was fun saying them and seeing the reaction I got. So I started spewing them out around my cousin's mom. She kept telling me to stop, but she also kept laughing so I kept doing it. Then one day she sat me down and started cussing me out in English. Keep in mind that my aunt may have never missed a day of church in her life. Those words coming out of her mouth just made a terrible picture. 

There's a good chunk of our answer right there: there are more people involved in a conversation than just the speaker. Even if a speaker has no clue what they're saying, the listener might, and that makes even what seems to be gibberish potentially significant. (To an Albanian it really doesn't matter what I wrote up above, but to a Russian it could be the difference between friendship and enmity) Just because you don't know what you're saying, you are still responsible for what comes out of your mouth: 

"From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so." James 3:10

"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." Ephesians 4:29 

"But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander; and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." Colossians 3:9-10

"The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips. Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body." Proverbs 16:23-24

"Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person." Matthew 15:10-11 

So what if we're in Albania and I'm speaking gibberish to all parties? This brings us to one more, really important part to all of this. 

Although the scripture passages referenced above don't necessarily refer to times when the speaker doesn't understand what she's saying, they point at an understanding of words and speech that takes us beyond asking, "is it okay if I say this/that?" As Jesus says in Matthew 15, what comes out of your mouth represents what's in your heart. If it's filth coming out, then there's a source for that. If it's gibberish, is that any better? What should be coming out of the mouths of followers of Christ is speech that builds up, that glorifies God and shows love to one another. 

Taking the stance that language is only as good/significant as the meaning we give it may seem progressive at first, but let's see if it passes the "reality test." When would there be a time to randomly utter a cultic chant that you didn't know the meaning of? Or what if I've decided that f*ck is just another four letter word and decided to add it into my preaching to "add some flavor"? 

You see what I'm getting at? Will God still love you if you cuss like a sailor? Of course he will, because his love isn't based on our actions in the first place. But would it be glorifying to him and uplifting to those around you? Probably just as uplifting as it would be for me to utter random cultic chants or drop more f-bombs in my sermons. 

Every word we speak is significant because it is a chance to build up or tear down. 


Image taken from: http://againstthewholegrain.blogspot.com/2011/04/lee-siegel-sartre-semantics-and-hope.html