Language

What a gift language is to us.  Animals communicate with each other, principally within their own species, even to mankind.  The difference between language expressing reflective thought and the sound/body factor of animals (as a wagging tail) although related to communication and understanding, are different to significant degree raising human language to higher level than nature can reach.  That higher level means that language can be visited to nature for meaning – as it has been and remains.  (We might speculate at this point about heaven’s language, retaining some human perceptions, such as music or mathematics.  The most common speculations, by secularists and saints, include math or music, or both.)   Zephaniah wrote of a perfect language, implying that in the ultimate context there will be one perfect language.

I am among those who deeply appreciate language for its affirmative characteristics, would like to protect it from abusers, feel embarrassed at what can be done with it to the degradation of the life of mankind, but also to be wholly taken with God’s use of language as the most adapted tool of mankind to advance God’s preferred communication with us – demonstrated at its best in what is commonly called the Judeo-Christian Scripture.  It is one document, often referred to in its two major divisions as Scripture.  It is one in the whole Scripture and several in its subdivisions.  It is Old Testament and New not because Scripture is to be divided, but accommodates those who close Scripture history with the Old Testament, and those who close it with the New Testament redemptive conclusion.  It is also divided to demonstrate the differentiation of that preceding the Messiah’s physical appearance, and that which follows it.  This and other divisions are related not to Scripture, but to the variants of the interpretation of Scripture.  God appears to have a special value to some matters in the evaluation of mankind, and one of those relates to the way language is used generally, but with Scripture particularly.  His primary interest is that it be understood for its meaning as designed by the communicator, not by any shift, design or preference of the receiver of the communication.  To misdirect the true meaning is taken as an act of arrogance.  Even the accent of the law revealed from God to Moses the treatment of language in truth is taken as requirement as it is in the Ten Commandments.

We use language to affirm ourselves in a court, to make oaths for right and wrong that are held important to be evaluated of God, to express the specificity of our lives so to identify who we are and by what perception we are to be understood.  Our language identifies us and includes every nuance of our lives including what we do with our bodies, the clothes we wear, the food we eat – even how we eat it.  It is in both sounds and conduct so to present a unified understanding of our meaning, or the meaning we are receiving.  Since it is originated in an individual it is presumed to be serious to purpose and thus violated when the purpose of civilization, of earth and heaven are violated.  So it is that Scripture teaches: Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.  (James 5:12; 2 Corinthians 1:19-20)  Our failure (distortion) in language is counted as sin.  Our language reveals us.  We show our crudity, dissimulation, evil thoughts, sins, disrespect, and degradation in our language.  We reveal our love, meaning, beliefs, searches, values, concerns, even our lives in our language.  We ought to get to know language, its simplicity and complexity, what it holds that is nurturing and what is destructive.  God favors and praises some language and actually damns some language.  We are taken by our word.  It is clear from Scripture that language reveals us.  The child leaves innocence and becomes responsible when language has offered its confidence to responsibility.  That gift may be used for good, for evil, and much in between.  It is interesting that Jesus chose to come among humankind as a preacher/teacher using words acceptable to heaven – not armies, or other forms of authority, but words.  With the disciples the Christian can prayerfully say to God: Where shall we go for thou hast the words of eternal life.  His message is not of any privateinterpretation.  It is interpreted to each of us by the Holy Spirit if we invoke his presence, and in straightforwardness of meaning.  That meaning, gained by attention to language by God, is his gift addressing our questions.