The Poverty of Language: God So Loved the World, But We Should Hate It?
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" [John 3:16].
"...don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" [James 4:4].
Which one of these Scriptures is true and which is false?
They can't both be true, right? We can't in one breath say that God loved the world, and with the next say that we should not even be friends with the world, because that would make us an enemy of God, who Himself loved it. Can we?
I hope you're hearing the sarcasm here. Of course we can love the world and hate the world. Of course both John 3:16 and James 4:4 are true. It all depends on what sense we're using the term "the earth."
Which brings me to the bigger point.
I'm not an enemy of propositional truth. Of course propositions may be true or false. Even the most hardened postmodernist would have to admit this. The problem is that our language is too limited, our experiences too varied, and our God too magnificent to be reduced to a set of objectively true statements about Him.
And this is true of the words used in the Bible itself!
There are senses, nuances, contexts, which make a word or phrase mean one thing in one place and another in another. Sometimes in the same sentence!
"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it."
"Life," "save," lose;" all of these words mean one thing in the first half of Jesus' mysterious proclamation, and another in the second half.
Up until a very recent time in human history, people were well aware of the limitations of human language to convey deep, rich, true meanings. These same people recognized the necessity of other modes of communication, often times, as the only way to adequately convey such meanings. The notion of truth has been wrongly marginalized to mean only objective, scientific, propositional truth, with all other truths being of a lesser grade.
We must get back to the realization that the spoken and written word, though remarkably capable of supporting most forms of communication, is usually insufficient to convey all truth.
Which is why God gave us symbols. And metaphors. And parables (ever wonder why Jesus used them as much as He did?). And music. And art. And poetry. And the ability to use all these to communicate...to communicate Truth!
Let's not get overly bogged down with words, even when we're talking about The Word. Let's not be that guy who uses his hammer and philips-head screwdriver to fix everything in the house, leaving a garage full of tools gathering dust, and when he comes to something that requires a pipe wrench, convinces himself that its not broken.
A famous ballerina was once asked after a performance what the dance meant. She responded, “If I could say it in words, I wouldn’t need to dance it.”
Beautifully put, in just the right words.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
"...don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" [James 4:4].
Which one of these Scriptures is true and which is false?
They can't both be true, right? We can't in one breath say that God loved the world, and with the next say that we should not even be friends with the world, because that would make us an enemy of God, who Himself loved it. Can we?
I hope you're hearing the sarcasm here. Of course we can love the world and hate the world. Of course both John 3:16 and James 4:4 are true. It all depends on what sense we're using the term "the earth."
Which brings me to the bigger point.
I'm not an enemy of propositional truth. Of course propositions may be true or false. Even the most hardened postmodernist would have to admit this. The problem is that our language is too limited, our experiences too varied, and our God too magnificent to be reduced to a set of objectively true statements about Him.
And this is true of the words used in the Bible itself!
There are senses, nuances, contexts, which make a word or phrase mean one thing in one place and another in another. Sometimes in the same sentence!
"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it."
"Life," "save," lose;" all of these words mean one thing in the first half of Jesus' mysterious proclamation, and another in the second half.
Up until a very recent time in human history, people were well aware of the limitations of human language to convey deep, rich, true meanings. These same people recognized the necessity of other modes of communication, often times, as the only way to adequately convey such meanings. The notion of truth has been wrongly marginalized to mean only objective, scientific, propositional truth, with all other truths being of a lesser grade.
We must get back to the realization that the spoken and written word, though remarkably capable of supporting most forms of communication, is usually insufficient to convey all truth.
Which is why God gave us symbols. And metaphors. And parables (ever wonder why Jesus used them as much as He did?). And music. And art. And poetry. And the ability to use all these to communicate...to communicate Truth!
Let's not get overly bogged down with words, even when we're talking about The Word. Let's not be that guy who uses his hammer and philips-head screwdriver to fix everything in the house, leaving a garage full of tools gathering dust, and when he comes to something that requires a pipe wrench, convinces himself that its not broken.
A famous ballerina was once asked after a performance what the dance meant. She responded, “If I could say it in words, I wouldn’t need to dance it.”
Beautifully put, in just the right words.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Raffi,
Thanks for your recent comment. I responded to the Post-Evangelical Manifesto briefly here:
http://danielbennett.blogspot.com/
2008/06/response-to-raffi-shainian.html
I also took the liberty of calling you by your first name...hope that's OK!
Daniel
From a brother in Christ, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Good stuff. BIG stuff. In your words, I probably wouldn't know where to start. We could talk for years, and I guess I wouldn't mind that at all. Maybe we could nudge one another away from some stifling, dangerous entrenchments. I'll keep an eye on your blog and comment from time to time; and I'll look forward to hearing from you. Mustard-seed style. Fair enough?
Grace and Peace, brother.
Raffi
Look forward to continuing to hear from you!
I'll take a closer look at the Manifesto. The news article just connected it to Liberty Univ., which connected to Christian political activism which gave me ... the goosebumps.
I guess it's what we do as humans, but I'm just wary/weary of Christians who faction into groups that do/look like/say/vote the exact same thing. With no room for discussion.
I've seen it synchronized down to hairstyle.
Be brave, be open, be patient w/ each other and think.
I need to check out more of your blog, too -- very thoughtful, thanks for that. And thanks for reading/commenting on mine.
Blessings
enthugger.blogspot.com
Hi Raffi,
Good post! I appreciate the measured tone versus the frantic hallucinations found at either extreme of the post/modernist spectrum. We expend a prodigious energy trying to understand truth. What would the world look like if we put even a small fraction of that energy into living Truth? We need both, but I believe one cannot really know Truth until one has lived Truth. The self-righteous satisfaction of winning an argument makes that a much more appealing and immediately gratifying way to pretend to stand for the Truth. That's a confession rather than an accusation.
Blessings.