Matthew 10:19 But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to respond or what to say. In that hour you will be given what to say.
My pronouns are The Redeemed of the Lord, and The Righteousness of God through Christ Jesus. You can call me that anytime you want. The list of things I cannot say is growing daily. As I tiptoe around the English language to express myself to my readers, friends, and family, I find that I am reminded frequently that a particular expression or word (that apparently has now become a slur, insult, or offence) can no longer be used to explain a subject that needs explaining. I now have to dumb down to a world system that is trying to create a one-world language of commonality and acceptance that everyone will be happy with. Yeah right, for God so loved the world, He didn’t send a committee so everyone would be in one accord.
It seems to me that they once tried having a one-world language. Gen. 11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common form of speech. The results of this unity project resulted in outright hubris and disobedience in the highest. Gen. 11:4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” This ended up being a very bad plan for man, as God confounded the one language and forced the languages of the world to become a reality. Gen. 11:7 Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” 8 So the LORD scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city.
It does not matter the language one speaks; we need to be heard by God and man. Psalm 5:1 Listen to what I say, LORD! Carefully consider my complaint! We were created in the image of God, and in the same way that God wants friendship and desires to be heard by His creation, we need to express our uniqueness and also be heard. Our languages are supposed to describe the glory of God and the intentions of our hearts. 1Cor. 14:10 Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning.
At this time, there are approximately 7200 spoken languages in the world, and our Heavenly Father understands them all better than the people who are speaking them. The secularists tend to go out of their way to be misunderstood and offended by anything they call triggering. With God, it is impossible for Him to misunderstand us. We do not need to worry about innuendo, sarcasm, or derogatory colloquialisms coming from God, or be fearful of our hearts being misunderstood in that manner. We have a Heavenly Father who knows exactly what we are saying to Him, and He always hears us from the honest context of our living words. I believe one of the reasons North American Christians have become so jaded and easily triggered by nuances and buzzwords is that they have created a brand of Christianity that has no real substance.
North American churched people are reading from a catechism of whitewashed memes and slogans with no nourishing Gospel for the inner heart. They find themselves trying to explain Christianity through their own experiences, which are biased and skewed because they live in a free, commoditized world. As in many parts of the world, Christ crucified is not being taught from a position of being persecuted to the point of death. They are not teaching the Lord’s salvation from the viewpoint of abject poverty, gurgling swamp sicknesses, and starvation. They easily pontificate from their air-conditioned rooms while snacking on junk foods, complaining of being overweight and whining about the struggles of getting out of bed to go to work while the majority of the war-ravaged world is suffering for their faith.
What is being taught is a North American big-production, money-centred brand of Christianity that does not exist in most parts of the world, which causes much controversy within our assemblies. Someone might say to me at this point, “Norm, you can’t say that. Don’t you know you might offend a lot of Christians?” What can I say but that God can heal an offended heart. The Word warns that a lot of the church’s problems will arise from within, and we would need to pay attention. Jude 1:4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. There are a lot of things we should not say out of courtesy; however, loving the Lord is not something we ever need to apologize for. We can say that Jesus Christ is Lord, and I will not tiptoe around that fact.
Great article. Thanks, Norm, your steadiness is being felt.
Thank you, Doug