Language Problems

As the Supreme Court debates the merits of the case of whether or not marriage has a definition, I find myself in a growing confusion over language. As post-modernism continues to soak into society, undefining so many of our words, I find it harder and harder to communicate. It's like the whole Tower of Babel thing (Gen 11:1-9) all over again. We think we're speaking the same language, but we're not.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this redefining and undefining process is in its sexual nature. So many words once meant one thing and have now come to mean something exclusively sexual. Let me give you a prime example. I like to read older books. In these older books we find the English language as it once was. So, for instance, an event might happen like this. A somber fellow walks into a gathering centered around a mirthful man. The two have a brief conversation that ends when the serious man shouts, "Fool!" at his laughing associate and storms out of the room. Plain enough? Well, in other times, it could have been described like this. "After brief but intense intercourse, he ejaculated in the face of the gay man." Clearly if I were to use that description today, nothing that I said would have been understood as I meant it. And that's just a single example. One woman argued that loving God was sexual in nature because "Haven't you read how Jonathan Edwards often speaks of intercourse with God?" It appears that we live in an entire world of double entendre where almost anything and everything has sexual overtones. It is said, "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled." (Titus 1:15) That's the world in which we live. (As further proof, I have to be careful not to use the standard three-letter abbreviation when referencing Paul's epistle to Titus because someone will take that somewhere they should not.)

Look at these changes. I'm sure you're already aware of the redefinition (or, more precisely, the "undefinition" of "marriage". But there is so much more. "Tolerance" once meant "recognizing and allowing differences" and now means "embracing someone else's view", the opposite of tolerance. "Love" once was warm affection and now assumes a much more sexual content. "Hate", on the other hand, meant "devalues" in biblical terms but became "detest" in more modern terms. Now it means "doesn't agree with." "Rights" used to refer to God-given, just claims but now refers to whatever entitlements people think they have. And when did a "fine" become "tax"? "Diversity" is only "diversity" in its original sense when it excludes those who are not in current favor ... which is the opposite of "diversity". Just a few examples.

Then there are the additions. There is "meatspace", a reference to the real world as opposed to the virtual world, because everyone knows the virtual world is real. Oh, wait, that's not right. Believe it or not, "lookie-likie" is a word in the Oxford English Dictionary. It means "a lookalike", because "lookalike" is so difficult to use and understand. "Best friends" worked okay, but now we have "besties" or, shorter, "BBFs". And, lest a gender be shortchanged, they added "heroine-worship" because you might have thought that "hero-worship" only referred to males. All this for 2015. And lots more. "Honest-like" refers to someone who appears honest but isn't. Thus, "honest-like" is "not honest". "Monogamish" is not monogamous, but tries to sound like it. "Truthy", like "honest-like", only sounds truthful but isn't. And the terms to which they're related deteriorate.

Of course, some of this is somewhat to be expected and understood. English is not a dead language. It is a living language. Things change. The word, "homosexual", didn't even exist in the English language until it was coined in 1868. And why would any English user need a word to describe a vehicle that moves under its own power ("automobile") before such a vehicle existed. That's all understandable. New words will come. And meanings will shift. Okay. But when simple, straightforward language between people becomes no longer intelligible, we are, indeed, seeing a modern Babel. Language is for communicating. In far too many cases, now, it doesn't. So while we wrangle about the ramifications of an idea, it turns out that we may not even be talking about the same idea. Because we have language problems. Lots of them.