The Capital Steps

My mom comes from a previous era ... you know, prior to computers. She was taught that you hit "Return" (what today's crowd knows as "Enter") at the end of each line, that a period in a sentence is followed by two spaces, that paragraphs begin with 5 spaces ... that sort of thing. And you can see it when she emails me. There are returns in odd places because it was the end of her line on her screen. There are two spaces between each sentence. My mom follows the rules. And that's a good thing. But it's not a common thing.

Today's society has changing rules. What was scandalous in my youth is so normal today that those who disagree are considered foolish, narrow-minded, and outdated. Even in small things, the language changes, the rules of punctuation and grammar and writing change, things are constantly moving. Some of these things are small and amoral -- neither good nor bad. Some are huge, contributing to the decline of our society. And some ... well ... I just don't know.

One of the changes I've seen that I just can't quite decide on (See? I just ended that phrase with a preposition ... previously a no-no) is the concept of capitalization. What I specifically have in mind here is the capitalization of the pronouns that refer to God. It used to be that we always capitalized "He" and "Him" and even "Me" and the rest when used in reference to God (or, of course, Jesus). It was a differentiator. It indicated respect. Today, of course, that is just about completely gone. The modern Bibles don't do it. The modern writers don't do it. It has almost vanished entirely.

It is a bit odd to me. Like my mom, I come from a previous era. You always capitalize those things because ... it's God we're talking about. I mean, we always capitalize the pronoun for ourselves, don't we? You almost never see "I" written "i", and if you do, it's because the author obviously didn't care about standard communication protocol (read "is too lazy to hit the SHIFT key"). Of course, English, it seems, is the only language that capitalizes the first person pronoun. We don't capitalize "me" or "we" or "he" or "they". It seems that "I" am the ultimately important person. God's pronouns, on the other hand, have been devalued. He's just another person ... right?

I know. Things change. I can't stop it. And I frankly don't know if changing "He" to "he" is a big deal. But, hey, I'm still wondering if changing "Thou" to "You" was a good idea. (You know ... I came from the culture that prayed in King James English ... as if that was the only English God understood.) Sure, it's easier for us, but are we losing something? Are we losing respect? Are we bringing God down to our level? Or are we just moving with the language because, after all, God looks on the heart, right? I don't know. I haven't decided. Where do these steps of capitalization and such take us? Do we want to go there? I'm not at all sure.