And God said, Let there be Light.  Genesis 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

Human language may be the least understood gift of God’s many gifts to mankind. We come into the world unable to speak, but then sometime between the ages of one and two, the infant tongue is loosed and begins to create meaningful sounds.  The special joy of hearing our little ones utter their first words and then their first sentences is infectious. Humans  are wired for language. 

 We are the only species to think, speak and communicate in words instead of grunts and gestures. Scientists cannot explain language phenomena with any degree of –  well –  science.  Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, “Darwinologist” and every other “ologist” make attempts to fit language within their own discipline’s paradigms but it remains a mystery, one  they do not readily admit to. *

 Back in my college days, a linguistics professor opened my eyes to how language  normally changes  over time. We no longer speak Elizabethan English as Shakespeare did and two hundred years ago computer terms would have been gibberish. ( Still are to me! )  Less obvious  is that language is often  subtly and deliberately manipulated to form opinions, affect our choices in the marketplace and shape the future by appealing to the self: needs, emotions and experiences.  It is a deadly tactic. Madison Avenue was once the apparent power in advertising  to seduce people to buy  certain products and render  them  indispensible to the consumer.  Think Coca Cola or McDonald’s or Disney and how those names are globally entrenched. More importantly, today there are even more insidious agencies working to shape  the larger marketplace of  culture, values and history through language.

Words have power to occupy our minds and souls. In 2021 the power of language and of individual words should be pretty apparent.  In what seems a staggeringly  short time,  words  we all knew have changed so drastically and so rapidly that one struggles to make sense of them. Postmodernism and relativism  have done away with the plumb lines of moral absolutes. “Truth“ is now an incoherent abstraction echoing Pilate’s cynical response to Jesus: “What is truth?” And thus, like Pilate the world gives itself permission to think and act without consequence or constraint. It begins with hijacking language and targeting ideas and words which have always  had moral contexts, especially those coming from the Judeo-Christian ethic.  Words like “marriage, gender,  fetus,  law and justice “ today  mean only what the individual – or more importantly someone up the power chain – interprets.  I don’t know what is on today’s bucket blacklist.  The daily list of “doublespeak” grows like a cancer and like the Nazi  burning of forbidden  books,  words are burning on the devil’s pyre.

Language presently is not about context or lexicology but about  seduction and control.  I believe specific words are being used as weapons by those in power to create fear,  confusion and  division among  us.  It is also to create a common global language based on self idolatry  devoid of moral, ethical or spiritual  values. What is one to do  such an onslaught? Specifically, how can Christians witness with love and grace? How can we stand on the Word with our words?

This is nothing new. The Enemy has been playing head word games with people since the beginning. In the Garden  Satan enticed Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge by manipulating her  to doubt God’s Word of warning.  When Satan spoke the first lie to Eve, “Did God really say… he  slyly insinuated  that God was not God!  He made God out to be a liar like himself.

And therein lies the crux of the problem.  There is only one original liar and it is not the Creator. One of the very first things God revealed about Himself in Genesis 1 is that He is a God who speaks.  His Word created light and life when there was only darkness and chaos.   God doesn’t, cannot  change and thus, logically  neither does His  Voice or  His Word which are  revealed in the Scriptures. They point to the promise of the Messiah who would save God’s people. For thousands of years, God spoke  through the prophets of Jesus, the incarnate Word of God. In John’s beautiful introduction to the Gospel of Jesus, he wrote,

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

 The Creator chose to share language with humans. Jesus spoke  human words  to a broken, desperate  world, desperately in need of salvation just like ours.  He offered Himself in the most simple words  – as  the Truth, the Life and the Way. His words are “spirit and life”. They are our only hope, the  alternative to the lies, deception and death still coming out of Satan’s mouth with the help of duped humans. We cannot afford to listen to any other voice than the One sent as the Holy Spirit . We cannot afford to accept language and carnal words seeking to destroy body, mind and spirit. We cannot afford to stop hearing God’s total, sufficient and complete Word. Like Peter our response to Jesus must be

“Lord, to whom shall we go for you have the words of life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.”…  John 6:68

 It is the Lord God who gave us language, not language that gave us God. Whom then shall we believe today? Which voice occupies our minds and thoughts.  If we want “freedom” or “justice” or  “truth”, etc., we  can either cower in fear while  the  adversary  continues to lie with words.  Or we kneel before God  confessing that we  believe the truth  of God’s Word, through  Jesus, the living Word and  asking Holy Spirit  so that we can  know the truth which sets us  free. The consequences of not doing so are deadly not only for us, but for our children and grandchildren.   There is no middle ground in this war of words.  There never has been.

* For an interesting, secular  overview of the failure of science to explain the existence of language, I suggest “The Kingdom of Speech ” by Tom Wolfe.