“Are you materialistic? Depends on how you define materialistic.” This is the opening line of a Leonardo DiCaprio commercial on YouTube that I’ve been seeing just about every time I watch. I still have no idea for what. But I do know this much: materialism…is…bad? At least this is what the Hollywood crowd is trying to tell me, right? And Leo’s in with that crowd, isn’t he?
I get it though, and this is something I’ve often pondered: the ability to exploit language, specifically in defining terms. Whatever the case in Leo’s commercial, to someone who cares about the precision of language, it’s bothersome. The hijacking of words to incite a gut reaction is dirty pool, but it’s right out of the playbook on human manipulation.
Being nearly forty years in a field that works with language and having learned a couple myself, I’m particularly sensitive to its use. Being a reader of the Bible, even more so. I understand that single words have multiple meanings – and so do you if you’re reading this. To demonstrate, if I were to say “I love pizza,” you would never mistake that for my marrying it and living with it for 35 years. But when I say “I love my wife,” you get it.
By example, among the worst offenders is the hijacking of the suffix “phobia” and making it a slam dunk to shut down opposition and close off debate. To attach “-phobe” to the end of any word for a cause immediately paints its opponents as unreasonable bigots. What used to be classically “a type of anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation,” has become “an extreme or irrational fear or dislike of a specified thing or group.” No room for debate. No room for subtlety. No room for what many may have believed for centuries. To be any kind of “-phobe” means there’s no room for you in society any more.
Let me make this perfectly clear: my Christian faith calls me to love my fellow humans, not condemn and hate them. But my faith also tells me more. It tells me that there was a perfection established by God at the foundation of the world, and this perfection was destroyed when humanity rejected God and turned to itself as the kings and captains of life. We all manifest this destruction in our own ways – and it is impossible for any one of us to live up to the standard that allows us to join in true fellowship with God. Left to ourselves, we tell him, “No thanks. I’m fine the way I am.” As a matter of fact, we more likely take it further – “How dare you imply that my way is any less valid than yours.”
Imagine me uttering these words to my creator – the one who gave me life. Imagine if I were to just brush off my behavior by saying, “Hey, it’s in my nature to want to have sex with as many women as I want. How dare you imply that my way is any less valid than yours.”
But I’m not saying that my way is the way. I’m saying God’s way is the way. And I’m not saying that you must do what I say, I’m saying that if you want fellowship with God, you must do what he says.
But you can’t. And that’s really the point of Christianity. You can’t. He can. You don’t. He does. You take it all and make a mess of it. He sets it right by taking the punishment you deserve for doing it your way and giving you the righteousness that comes with doing it his way. That’s the great exchange.
There’s good news and bad news behind this all. The good news is if you don’t believe in the God I’m talking about, you don’t have to worry about it one bit. Just go about your business. The bad news though is if I’m right, there’s no one paying for your punishment unless you turn to the one I’m telling you bought it all for you.
It would be nice if we were more precise with our language. Words can be used to identify us, but they can also manipulate and mislead. It is our duty, both as Christians and non-Christians, to be clear in what we say but also charitable in what we hear. Above all though, our words are infinitely more meaningful if their content holds the truth.
And so we must ask ourselves — “do they?”