Mastering the English Language

Language is not, as it turns out, something real. It is merely the means by which humans communicate ideas. It is the expression of thoughts. Language, then, is structured by thoughts and simply the vehicle by which those thoughts are expressed.

It is no surprise, then, that the massive and ongoing efforts to master the English language continues unabated. If we can take your expression of thoughts and twist it enough to make you feel a certain way, we've not only mastered the language; we've mastered you.

So we hear repeatedly from the news media that Adrian Peterson hit his child with a tree branch. Appalling. Horrible. No one thinks otherwise. Except the term "tree branch" does not express what really happened. He used a "switch". A "branch" is a piece of a tree that grows from the trunk. A "switch" is a slender, flexible stick or twig. So when the media again and again tells you that Mr. Peterson hit his son with a branch, I really want to show up and ask. "Hey, in one hand I have a branch and in the other a switch. I'm going to hit you with one. You decide which one you want." Sure, the injuries to the boy were not right and I'm not defending Peterson, but, please, media, stop using terms that stir emotions without having their basis in fact. They are manipulating your emotions by playing with words.

There is a whole world of this kind of twisting of the English language in the realm of homosexuality. First, there is "gay". In 1934 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers played together in The Gay Divorcee, a comedy about a woman trying to divorce her husband, not the story of same-sex attraction. But today the term cannot mean "merry", "bright", or "abounding in social pleasures", the meanings most common in the very recent past. The Flintstones promised "a gay old time", and they surely didn't reference sexual desire in it.

Then there's "anti-gay". Shifting "gay" from "merry" to "sexual relations between the same gender", it moves again to from "same-sex attraction" to a definition of a birth condition. In a recent episode of CBS's Blue Bloods, the Catholic chief of police played by Tom Selleck was asked about one of his officers who was "outed" as "gay". How could the chief defend this officer and remain consistent with his "anti-gay religious views"? You see, it is now "anti-gay"--opposition to a group of people who were "born that way"--to believe as the Bible teaches that a particular behavior is a sin. Funny thing ... no one uses the term "anti-thief" or "anti-murderer" if you consider theft or murder a sin. But switching "gay" from "happy" to "same-sex preference" and from "same-sex preference" to "same-sex orientation", then suddenly "anti-gay" becomes an opposition to an entire class of people rather than a particular behavior.

And it doesn't stop there. We are currently in a massive upheaval of the term "marriage". Multiple states defined "marriage" as "the union of a man and a woman" and are then accused of having a "gay marriage ban". That's the term. They don't have a "ban on dogs marrying cats" or even a "polygamy ban"; it's a "gay marriage ban". Words. A mastering of the English language intended solely to control how you think. No longer is it about "marriage"; it's about equality. "Other people have the right to do x, so if we are to have equal protection under the law, we will redefine x to mean y and then demand our right to have x just as you do." But it is a twist, a hijack, a means of controlling your thinking. Worse, it is working. So obscured now is the language that very few--even among those who favor traditional marriage and oppose "gay marriage"--recognize that the language has changed, the idea has been subverted, and your ideas are being manipulated by your language.

So it goes. "Love" changes to "sex". "Happiness" changes from "emotional contentment" to "indulging my own pleasures". "Pro-life" changes to "anti-choice". "Tolerance" shifts from "allowing the existence of something with which you disagree" to "embracing that with which you disagree so that you no longer disagree with it" and it is now "intolerant" to be tolerant. "Judgment" originally referred to the ability to form an opinion, to decide, to distinguish between good and bad, and now it's "having the view that something that we embrace is wrong" ... and it's not judgmental to attack those who have such a view.

All of this without even touching on Christianity. Because in that realm there is a host of language variations that have been wrought to alter the meanings of concepts, ideas, and doctrines. Words get pulled out of Christianity, rotated to a new meaning, then fed back in and you're supposed to swallow them whole. I would venture to guess that a good part of the entire process of mastering the language in order to alter your thinking is, in the final analysis, aimed at altering your thinking about Christ. Terms like "love your neighbor" are subverted when "love" is redefined and "the Bride of Christ" means something quite different when "marriage" is changed. "Rejoice evermore" moves from "joy" to "happiness" to "doing whatever makes me feel pleasant", and even "sin" is shifting under the pounding that Satan is giving it so that it becomes a "faux pas", a "mistake, so that even if you use the words correctly, they will no longer mean what you intended and you may not even know that you no longer mean what they intended. Oh, no, this isn't mere "evolution" of a language. This mastery of language is war (Eph 6:12).