Well, it’s been a while since ol’ Uncle Donkey cracked a window open into his soul. There’s a couple reasons for this.
First, it smells like a moldy old garden shed in here. Second, I live in perennial fear of disturbing any “lonely soulisms” that might be hibernating on the ceiling fan or under the water cooler. This being acknowledged, Paul also makes it clear in 2 Corinthians 1 that God brings his people through various trials so we can more effectively help those around us. If he unfolds particular light to us through a difficult season, good stewardship isn’t stuffing it in a green waste bag and tossing it on the curb.
So for what they’re worth, I thought I’d pass along a box of recent thoughts on words, writing, and communication in general. No, they’re not organized. And yes, you can have them all for a dollar if you also promise to take Great Aunt Tracy’s wicker wine rack. For those who still feel robbed by the end, I’ll only point you towards the contract you automatically agreed to when you became a subscriber.1
To sum up, I’ve lately felt convicted in regards to what I’ll call an … unbefitting … approach to language. This doesn’t mean I’ve cowed to the mewlings of the What Wouldn’t Jesus Say guild, or that Balaam will be any less offensive moving forward for those its become my moral duty to offend. It does mean I’ve been struck afresh at both the world-building and world-shattering nature of words — at their capacity to both make and unmake. And although most people wouldn’t keep their C-4 components in with their Junior Magic Set props, it seems that various factors — the undiminishing stream of online content being perhaps the chief culprit — have essentially acclimatized us to a similar kind of carelessness with our words (Matt 12:36).
Second, there’s a certain indignity that occurs when, instead of being a vehicle for light and beauty, words become a means of satisfying some perverse and shrivelled lust within us. No, God’s kingdom isn’t dependant on the authenticity of his vessels (In every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice … Phil. 1:18). But neither is God glorified by the ministry of hypocrites.
Jesus tells us in Luke 17:10, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” If we are unworthy servants even in the midst of our duty, what does that make us in the midst of abjectly ignore our duty? Something you’d find under a subway bench, that’s what.
The Erosion of Common Ground
Part of the challenge of ministry in our day is that it feels difficult to say or write anything without having to continually stop and explain everything.
This is because effective communication requires shared culture, which the West once had in the form of a Christian worldview. Good, evil, hate, love, men, women, law, justice, faith … we used to have enough in common to have reasonably productive discourse about such things. That was before we sold our birthright for a bowl of goat curry. Multiculturalism, pluralism, and secularism — agents of cultural erosion — have reduced the island of words we can now assume general agreement on to roughly the surface area of a Panera bread loaf.
For those who witnessed the “equity card” debacle at the most recent NDP convention, that’s what happens to language when your common culture evaporates — nonsense — pandemonium. Words, passions and made-up hierarchies being flung around like they’d just been pulled from a bingo-ball machine.
See, when I use the word justice, I have in mind something relating to the punishment of evil. But many just think of flags, taking knees, and Ceremonies for the Appeasement of Vengeful Indigenous Ghosts Haunting the City Hall Council Chambers. When I use the word life, I have in mind the entire spectrum of earthly existence from zygot to natural death. But many just think of infancy to whenever life stops being easy. When I use the word traditional, I mean that which accords with our historical reliance on a Christian worldview. But many just imagine a bank of disembodied “values” relating back to the 1950’s zeitgeist.
Every age has has its own barriers to communication. Ours just happens to be a fluency in brainrot. So what to do in light of it?
When a machine isn’t running right, the solution isn’t to go on pretending everything’s fine. You try and fix what you can, then figure out how to work within what you can’t. When Paul wrote his letter to the Hebrews, he had high hopes of being able to move beyond “elementary teachings.” But they weren’t ready. They were wallowing on the lawn like anaphylactic teletubbies. Does he plow on with temple furnishings anyway? He does not. He shifts gears from “solid food” to “milk.” He communicates on the level of their ability. He becomes all things to all men that by any means he might win them.
Paul’s rules of engagement should become ours. If we need to slow down to define our terms, then so be it. God isn’t panicking, and neither should we.
The other thing I’ve noticed, at least in myself, is the temptation to not say anything until I can say everything. But this isn’t how the Gospel works. God doesn’t wait until someone understands every point of doctrine to save them. He works within our limitations. He takes our few loaves and fish and multiplies them. Through the Spirit, he takes our lame rhetoric and gives it feet like a deer. He takes our leaky apologetic and makes it irrefutable. He gives his angels wings and his messengers a flame of fire.
This gives us freedom to say what can be said, and to write what can be written, without waiting until we can drop the entire 43-Volume Brittanica Encyclopedia in someone’s lap.
A re-exaltation of monotony
Something changed for me one evening this past Christmas, as our family made its way through Ryan Whitaker Smith’s excellent book, Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton.
I can’t remember all the details but there was a blizzard raging outside and a wood fire blazing inside. There was also a half-decent Pinot noir hovering on the fringes. We, or rather Chesterton, had been talking about the incarnation as a kind of invasion into the winter stronghold of our world. As we lingered and chatted, an unexpectedly weighty discussion began to unfold around our dinner table.
Now, you can talk to any member of my family and they’ll tell you the number of times I’ve presided over “profound” discussions have been … minimal. But that evening, every question became incisive. Every response hit the precise heart of things. Every digression became just another facet effortlessly woven into the topic at hand. I became struck by what I can only describe as the divine weight of everything. For those who’ve read Orthodoxy, it felt like I’d just gone on a long journey and returned to my home country with new eyes.
Lewis said that there are no ordinary people — that no one has ever talked to a mere mortal. But the truth is, there’s no ordinary anything. There’s no ordinary dandelions. Or church buildings. Or cows. Or clouds. My dinner in’t ordinary, nor is the lilac tree blooming in front of my house. This isn’t me flirting with pantheism. This is me articulating that to catch even a glimpse of the Christ under creation is to assault any roots of cynicism or utilitarianism that may be mortifying our evangelism. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, and we ought to carry something of this grandeur on our lips and in our pens.
This has been pressed on me even more as I’ve been reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a book in nearly every way opposed to our current way of “doing language.” First, it is unapologetically inconvenient; it’s about 73,000 pages and about as heavy as sack of rice. It is slow and careful. It is self-effacing and razor sharp. It is an unhackable entity. It took a week for me to acclimatize to what this — thing — even was. Once I did, I felt like my canoe was no longer scraping along the surface of the shore and that I was now gliding along in deep water. I began to realize that social media, the relentless news cycle, and the constant pseudo-profundity and rage bait have seriously damaged our ability to take deep breaths.
Our entire generation is busy creating shallow, reactive takes that barely stand the test of hours, let alone years or centuries.
Where to From Here?
The detriment of the modern media machine is that it ends up conflating the urgency of things right in front of us with things happening millions of miles away. This isn’t to say we should ignore geopolitical issues. It is to say we shouldn’t be driven by them. Being preoccupied with what we can’t change instead of what we can usually just means nothing gets done, with our families, churches, and communities suffering the most for it.
There’s also the danger not just of geographical dislocation but of existential dislocation. This happens when, for various reasons, we try to escape into endeavors that not only are of no practical use to anyone, but that are positively destructive: cathartic doomism, empty speculations, ragebaiting, myth wrangling, dubious soothsaying, and pedantic treatises on obscurant theology come to mind. I’m not advocating for anti-intellectualism — in fact, all the things I just mentioned are the definition of anti-intellectualism. I’m advocating for teachers and leaders who make it their aim to carefully, reverently, and excitedly unfold what has been “once for all delivered to the saints.”
So there you have it — a kind of state of the union if you will. If you can count the house centepides scuttling around in my brain a union.
I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY SUBSCRIPTION CONSTITUTES A PERPETUAL WAIVER OF MY RIGHTS TO LIFE, LIBERTY, AND HAPPINESS.
ESPECIALLY HAPPINESS.
“The other thing I’ve noticed, at least in myself, is the temptation to not say anything until I can say everything.”
Me too, bro. Good piece.