The Truth about Language (James 3:1-12, Genesis 1 and 3) by Kim Thoday
Language is the architecture of our existence.
In the ancient world the spoken word was understood correctly as having the power to create reality. We tend to say: “you are what you eat.” The ancient equivalent is: “you are what you speak.” Speech in the ancient world had a sacred dimension.
Language is also about communication. Language is what marks us off from other species and language was the human survival kit in pre-historic times. In contemporary life, language is mostly reduced to the level of ‘sound bites’ to make money or win votes. And in a world of mass communication, words have become the cheapest currency in the global economy.
Yet language is, and always was, more than a tool of survival in the primeval forest. Language is a window upon the soul of the individual, the society and indeed, the state of the world. Furthermore, words have the power to create or destroy, free or oppress, symbolise or demonise … to lead to life or to death. Language gives meaning to consciousness – indeed language is consciousness. And consciousness, said Carl Jung, “is a precondition of being.”
In Genesis, God speaks and the cosmos is created. In John’s Gospel, God speaks again and the Word becomes Jesus Christ. God has to speak Jesus into existence because humanity had chosen to speak against God’s language. When God first spoke the world into existence it was good. God-breathed language is good and that goodness was reflected in the natural world (Genesis 1). God’s language is always about freedom and so the first human beings had freedom. But freedom and liberty are elusive ideals as all the modern revolutions have revealed. Perhaps no other modern writer speaks of this more eloquently than George Orwell. The story of Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge is also a powerful treatment of the paradox of freedom. The story reveals that self-consciousness (symbolised in Adam and Eve’s awareness of their nakedness) gives them the capacity to be God-like because they can now distinguish between good and evil (Genesis 3:5,22). Language is consciousness and language therefore is knowledge and knowledge is power to be self-determining. But this freedom, this self-determination, this power, means that human beings can choose good or evil or more often something in between. The Old Testament paints a broad picture of human beings who are often using language that is at odds with God’s language; a self-serving language, a self-righteous language, a language that denies the validity of God’s language of justice, compassion and mercy. And so God sends his prophets to continually remind Israel of the language, the story-line, of his Covenant with them. The New Testament proclaims that finally God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to reveal that true freedom, real self-determination, can only occur when we speak and live out God’s language of love, salvation, forgiveness and reconciliation.
In the Epistle of James, the writer fully understands that speech has the potential for creation and for destruction. James considers the control of speech to be one of the greatest human difficulties (3:1-12). James assumes that language has the potential to perfect (3:2). Language he realises is the ‘rudder’ for all that we do and for all that we are (3:4-5). Language, he alludes, has the ability to destroy all in its wake (3:5b-6a) – like a bushfire that is out of control, that was lit by a mindless arson or by the ignorant act of discarding a live cigarette butt.
The writer of James has much experience as a pastor and has personally experienced the devastation of speech that is negative, cynical, critical without love and correcting without grace. Undoubtedly he has had to address the deadly disease of gossip – the ill informed vilification of others. However, worst of all for him, are those Christians who from the same mouth speak the language of blessing and cursing. Those who hypocritically speak pious words in church and who yet speak evil and gossip in other contexts. For here is the breeding ground of treachery and deceit, lack of integrity, luke-warmness and apostasy (3:10). This is perhaps the most dangerous, most poisonousness, most destructive tendency of self-conscious humanity – the capacity we have for blatant hypocrisy. Perhaps we sup so much at the tree of knowledge that our self-consciousness extinguishes our God-consciousness. To that extent we become collectively unconscious.
Whilst we must, I think, listen carefully to the poststructuralist challenges to the sacred texts and grand narratives, still the importance of constructive “truth” and meaning remain for human existence. It seems to me that some notions of reality are “more true” than others. If this were not the case then, to use one example, the very foundations of our judicial system would be in question. To deny the reality of relativism is certainly to bury one’s head in the sands of postmodernity. Yet perhaps relativism is only possible against some supra reality, some metaphysical element of stability and essence. If not then to what does any thing we say relate? To what ultimately are we relative to? An extreme relativism or nihilism, I think, is an impossibility, or at least a form of madness, because it denies the existence of “the other.” And such a denial is a denial of our own existence. A nihilistic relativism, a language without meaningful connection to the past, to the “sacred bone” of history, and to “the other,” is to walk in a shadow world, a world before genesis: “a formless void.” For how can one exist in a world of non-existence? The “sacred bone” of the Christian tradition is that the ultimate “other” is the language of God, expressed quint-essentially in the New Testament language of Jesus’ life, ministry, Death and Resurrection.
Blessings in Jesus’ name,
KIM THODAY, HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OR CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Language is the architecture of our existence.
In the ancient world the spoken word was understood correctly as having the power to create reality. We tend to say: “you are what you eat.” The ancient equivalent is: “you are what you speak.” Speech in the ancient world had a sacred dimension.
Language is also about communication. Language is what marks us off from other species and language was the human survival kit in pre-historic times. In contemporary life, language is mostly reduced to the level of ‘sound bites’ to make money or win votes. And in a world of mass communication, words have become the cheapest currency in the global economy.
Yet language is, and always was, more than a tool of survival in the primeval forest. Language is a window upon the soul of the individual, the society and indeed, the state of the world. Furthermore, words have the power to create or destroy, free or oppress, symbolise or demonise … to lead to life or to death. Language gives meaning to consciousness – indeed language is consciousness. And consciousness, said Carl Jung, “is a precondition of being.”
In Genesis, God speaks and the cosmos is created. In John’s Gospel, God speaks again and the Word becomes Jesus Christ. God has to speak Jesus into existence because humanity had chosen to speak against God’s language. When God first spoke the world into existence it was good. God-breathed language is good and that goodness was reflected in the natural world (Genesis 1). God’s language is always about freedom and so the first human beings had freedom. But freedom and liberty are elusive ideals as all the modern revolutions have revealed. Perhaps no other modern writer speaks of this more eloquently than George Orwell. The story of Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge is also a powerful treatment of the paradox of freedom. The story reveals that self-consciousness (symbolised in Adam and Eve’s awareness of their nakedness) gives them the capacity to be God-like because they can now distinguish between good and evil (Genesis 3:5,22). Language is consciousness and language therefore is knowledge and knowledge is power to be self-determining. But this freedom, this self-determination, this power, means that human beings can choose good or evil or more often something in between. The Old Testament paints a broad picture of human beings who are often using language that is at odds with God’s language; a self-serving language, a self-righteous language, a language that denies the validity of God’s language of justice, compassion and mercy. And so God sends his prophets to continually remind Israel of the language, the story-line, of his Covenant with them. The New Testament proclaims that finally God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to reveal that true freedom, real self-determination, can only occur when we speak and live out God’s language of love, salvation, forgiveness and reconciliation.
In the Epistle of James, the writer fully understands that speech has the potential for creation and for destruction. James considers the control of speech to be one of the greatest human difficulties (3:1-12). James assumes that language has the potential to perfect (3:2). Language he realises is the ‘rudder’ for all that we do and for all that we are (3:4-5). Language, he alludes, has the ability to destroy all in its wake (3:5b-6a) – like a bushfire that is out of control, that was lit by a mindless arson or by the ignorant act of discarding a live cigarette butt.
The writer of James has much experience as a pastor and has personally experienced the devastation of speech that is negative, cynical, critical without love and correcting without grace. Undoubtedly he has had to address the deadly disease of gossip – the ill informed vilification of others. However, worst of all for him, are those Christians who from the same mouth speak the language of blessing and cursing. Those who hypocritically speak pious words in church and who yet speak evil and gossip in other contexts. For here is the breeding ground of treachery and deceit, lack of integrity, luke-warmness and apostasy (3:10). This is perhaps the most dangerous, most poisonousness, most destructive tendency of self-conscious humanity – the capacity we have for blatant hypocrisy. Perhaps we sup so much at the tree of knowledge that our self-consciousness extinguishes our God-consciousness. To that extent we become collectively unconscious.
Whilst we must, I think, listen carefully to the poststructuralist challenges to the sacred texts and grand narratives, still the importance of constructive “truth” and meaning remain for human existence. It seems to me that some notions of reality are “more true” than others. If this were not the case then, to use one example, the very foundations of our judicial system would be in question. To deny the reality of relativism is certainly to bury one’s head in the sands of postmodernity. Yet perhaps relativism is only possible against some supra reality, some metaphysical element of stability and essence. If not then to what does any thing we say relate? To what ultimately are we relative to? An extreme relativism or nihilism, I think, is an impossibility, or at least a form of madness, because it denies the existence of “the other.” And such a denial is a denial of our own existence. A nihilistic relativism, a language without meaningful connection to the past, to the “sacred bone” of history, and to “the other,” is to walk in a shadow world, a world before genesis: “a formless void.” For how can one exist in a world of non-existence? The “sacred bone” of the Christian tradition is that the ultimate “other” is the language of God, expressed quint-essentially in the New Testament language of Jesus’ life, ministry, Death and Resurrection.
Blessings in Jesus’ name,
KIM THODAY, HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OR CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
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