Words of the Christian

How often is it that we find ourselves using word that we assume are normal, and suddenly think about the correctness of the word? I find that as I am quite critical of the English lexicon in general, more so in the church and Christian context.

It’s Monday afternoon, and I’m sat in the office typing out college notes on the 6 competences of my course, and I notice that as I’m typing the little red wiggly line appears under a number of words that am certain that I am spelling correctly, so I double check them. Lo and behold those words aren’t in the computer dictionary, and it gets me thinking are these more words that have just been made up by Christians?

If I said to you the word ‘Disciple’ then chances are you’ll know what I mean, and the computer will not have a problem and not present me with a funny little squiggly red line. However, if I take this just one step further and make the word ‘Discipler’, or even ‘Discipling’ then it becomes a whole new kettle of fish, as the red lines of incorrectivity, yes I did just invent a new word for the purposes of this rant, oh the irony, now appear, why is that?

I’ve found that when looking through ‘church’ language Christians seem to be notorious of, here comes another new pair of inventions, verbifying nouns, nounifying verbs, or translating the noun or verb into a new tense, which might work if the English language still had defined tenses. There are also some instances of new adjectives appearing my “favourite” of which was when I heard the phrase ‘having had backslidden’. Grammatically it’s is all complete nonsense.

Now I do apologise, as I seem to have completely lost myself, and can’t remember where I was going with this, but I will most likely return to this subject as it is something which I continually struggle with when trying to relate church to people outside of it, in fact even to people inside of it as well. I’m not church-bashing at all, and I fully support the church, even though I don’t always agree with it, and I pray that people continue to be challenged by church, and continue to wrestle with issues they have, even ones that may seem as trivial as certain words that may get used. Also, I pray that we become more conscious of the words we ourselves use.

God bless.