When Words Fail

I have been complaining for a long time about the dissolution of language. It doesn't take a super genius or even a conservative to see that our world appears to be in the business of rewriting the way we communicate with each other. From less books and more internet to radical language revision to ... fill in your own example ... we're working harder than ever to change how people think by altering how we communicate (a la 1984). Do I think it's a conspiracy? Of course! But not one of human origin. This one comes from the father of lies.

In my short lifetime we've seen the end of "marriage" as a reasonable term, the shift of "love" to "sex," and whole lot of "alternative definitions" in the same sense as the ludicrous "alternative facts." These new definitions include defining "inclusiveness" to include exclusiveness, "tolerance" to embrace intolerance, and "equality" to begin to mean inequality. "Racism" no longer means "believing a particular race is superior to others" and now means "white people." "Sexism" once referred to the parallel of "racism" -- the belief that a particular sex was better than another. Now "sexism" is defined as "males." No one ever questioned "gender" before and now we've decided it has no actual meaning at all. One site, a "gender wiki," lists 249 different genders. Absolute nonsense.

How is this possible? How can we slip into such insanity? Oh, that's easy. Sin rots the brain. The more we embrace sin, the more our brains rot. Today we classify sin -- especially sexual immorality -- as perhaps the highest good. So it is no surprise that we can't even define simple terms or communicate properly. We live in a crazy world.

Some would like me to believe that what is needed is more careful reasoning and clearer logic. That might work in a sane-but-misguided world, but that's not the world in which we find ourselves today. I think the better option is elsewhere. I've noticed that, when I offer Scripture, opponents just dodge it. When I show "this verse" and "that passage," they certainly don't agree, but neither do they offer answers ... to those passages. "Oh, that's not true," they'll tell me. "That's just your opinion," they'll assure me. but what they don't do is tell me what those passages actually mean. Why? Because "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." (Heb 4:12). Because God says that His Word "shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." (Isa 55:11).

Maybe you disagree. Maybe you have a better plan. I'm beginning to see that this is a problem stirred up by the prince of the power of the air -- you know, the one whose path is followed by those dead in their sins (Eph 2:1-3). I'm beginning to see that it's the work of the god of this world who "has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Cor 4:4). Trying to do battle in logic and reason and facts with a people who have little use for any of that becomes pointless. I think it's time to let a God capable of making live people out of dead people and open blind eyes do the work. As for me, I'll take that better "sword."