We have always been somewhat mesmerized by media. This grows out of our feeling of rapture about communication, something the archaeologists have found scrawled on the cave walls. We are driven to communicate, which grows out of relationships with others. The media may be simple conversation and touch, which was the major system for millennia. We learned that we can leave messages on clay, or open cliffs. When language developed we chiseled messages on wayside rocks or in clay. We wrote on vellum (skins and leather); and later made papyrus as a cheaper more plentiful product. Copyists multiplied writings in long laborious days of writing. A few centuries ago the printing press was invented, and the story expanded exponentially. Through the millennia, art in drama, sculpture, painting, dance, grooming, architecture, dress, played a part in human communication. The whole business has now become so ubiquitous through electronics that we may have lost some respect for it. This is not unlike our loss in some sense of values in the waste of air and water. Water and air are so much with us we foul them and fail ourselves. They seem too big to fail. Language is fouled in carelessness with it, in crudity and swearing, in poor writing and speaking, in narrowness of culture, and the list grows. Early in the twentieth century since Jesus Christ, the story expanded beyond belief. Film was invented, as radio and television emerged, so that technology became supreme in media, ultimately finding its way in gadgetry that can be carried about on one’s person, useful in wireless communication. So important has the business become that it drives stock markets, and becomes the key to popular financial investment. It affords the generation, leadership, ideas, distractions, and ultimate actions of intelligent and ignorant peoples. Something common and varied as communication in its forms and meaning ought to be made even more worthwhile, and to find ways to stall those who would misuse it. Language casualness has not served mankind well. The matter has become serious, indeed. An article appearing in the city paper, written by a person who was once a gossip columnist has raised the question about an open letter to another person on her shared staff that included the repetition of a word represented in a body function as something so objectionable she felt some distress on what had happened, and why the word style, so appalling, has gained public usage.
Serious scholars have devoted creative thought to the matter of language. Does it form our thought, or does thought form language? It is difficult to gain a thought without language. Helen Keller believed she had gone from animal to human being when she discovered from her teacher that there were symbols that stood for what she felt inside herself. It is worthy of us to give sufficient respect for our language, because of the meaning of it all. In the generalization of Chomsky in mid-twentieth century, the academic community dropped the requirement of languages for its highest degree. Chomsky was too late for me. I had to pass exams for both German and Spanish to meet qualifications for a doctoral degree. But I learned that the thinking of peoples, in their languages, was sometimes different from mine. The language requirement might well serve some disciplines, but substitutes about language and meaning might achieve the purpose. It is clear to those who have experience in the fields that reading and writing, that speaking and listening, have declined in skills. Even some college graduates seem not to have been educated.
The Gospel depends upon communication effectiveness, which includes precision. The disciples said to Jesus: To whom may we turn, thou hast the words of eternal life. (John 6:28) The most significant person to have ever lived was a speaker using language purified – clean and true. Scripture is in words. Some of the greatest gifts we ever receive are in language – illustrated in, I love you. Spoken truly by God, and often truly by persons, we find reality, meaning, reason for advancing ourselves and others – ministering in truth, and dignity, something that lifts persons above the trials of life and venture to discovery, even hope for something more and better. We have no substitute. We deserve to receive better than what is being given, and give better than that we may have given. It is difficult for me to believe that the words of earthly or immortal life are to be slovenly or crude. Those persons yearning for beauty, clarity, objectivity, even humor and ecstasy may find it in words that project spiritual life. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020