My Death in Life

I love comic books.  I think it's a great medium to communicate things in a way other mediums cannot. A quote website claims that Chales Simic once said, "Poetry is an orphan of silence.  The words never quite equal the experience behind them."  That is what comics have to their advantage- when there is a moment that are meant to cause a loss for words, they have pictures.  Some of my favorite moments in comic books are when I've felt suspended in heavy moments because they just use art.  With that said, I was recommended to read Punk Rock Jesus by Sean Murphey, with a title like that I couldn't ignore it.

It is summertime.  What that means for a Moody Bible Institute- Spokane student staying in Spokane is sure to mean hanging with friends in the many parks, hanging out in random coffee shops, and (hopefully) working.  This is all true for me but I also have the privilege to be doing some work for my future Teacher's Assistant position for a Philosophy class at Moody this fall.  So if you were to run into me at one of the many coffee shops around town, I'm probably reading Nash's Life's Ultimate Questions and busily typing test and quiz questions.  Even though this sounds impressive, I want to make sure that you guys know... I'm a little behind.  But with some long days in coffee shops I should be on track in no time.

But today, when reading Nash's book, I came across something that I thought was really exciting and profound.  In Chapter 4 (I know, I know) Nash is discussing some of Aristotle's fundamental concepts.  In this is how Aristotle defined change; "the passage from potentiality to actuality (103)."  Allow me to break this down for you guys a little bit so that it can hit you as hard as this hit me.  Potentiality involves the matter of a substance or, in other words, it involves the material that makes up whatever the existing subject is.  Nash gives the example of a tree that is potentially a desk or a house.  Now actuality is determined by the form of a substance or the essential property makes a thing that particular thing.  This is a little bit harder to grasp but the idea is that a chair has the form of a chair.  The form of a chair is something that fulfills Aristotle's "final cause" (purpose) of a chair which is to be something that allows one to sit on it and stay up.

Hopefully you have stayed with me.  So the chair has the potentiality of being other things because of what is made up of but it is actually a chair primarily because the purpose that it was built to serve.  The profound thing is that Aristotle then said that actuality preceded potentiality, that things are built with purpose within themselves.  The example that Nash gives is that of a human embryo.  The embryo has the potentiality to become an adult, but that actuality- of it being a human being- has already preceded it becoming an adult.

Think about the real-life applications of this way of thinking!  If society were to accept actuality preceding potentiality there would be no way of thinking as the embryo as not a human being until it is born.  I may think this is profound because it aligns with my pro-life dealings, but it makes so much sense, especially in the case of the embryo.  It is also just profound to think that things are built with a purpose, which is something that people debate.

I just thought that I would share that with you guys today!  I'm just trying to show how Jerusalem and Athens can get along.  Sorry for not posting in a long time, but a lot of my thoughts and writing are going to the Soma blog, the publication a friend started over at MBI-Spokane.  I hope to do more informal work over here so that you guys can get a taste of what's going on over here in Spokane!  Please feel free to leave comments and to share this post with others.

The interns, Pastor Russ, and Dr. j

During the week of March 19-26th I went on a trip with my fellow interns and pastor to Chicago.  The idea of the trip was similar to what was experienced previously on the Urban Plunge (see Urban Plunge 2012 Reflections).  We were going to Chicago to visit various ministries, church plants, churches, and non-profit organizations to see what the needs of the city were (and how to find that information) and how the needs were being met.  Details of the trip were not known before we left.  We knew that we were going to Chicago and that we would be traveling around town but we had no idea to what areas and ministries until the day of, sometimes even right before we got there.

Instead of writing down a brief schedule and description of the entire trip, I thought I would share with you what I've been processing since then and the parts of the trip that contributed.  Before the trip started I had just started thinking about the differences in theology and how people can come to different philosophical conclusions based on the context of study.  For example, a person who is studying theology in a library without contact with anyone will come to different conclusions than a person who has no access to books and is only working in certain ministries.  I know these are extremes, but it is interesting to see how action affects thinking.

In line with my thoughts on this before the trip our host for most of the trip was a professor at Moody Graduate School- Dr. Julius Wong Loi Sing.  I cannot describe to you how helpful and entertaining it was to have him a part of the group.  He was in and out of our activities because he had other meetings and classes, but when he was with us his sense of humor and his knowledge kept us on our toes.  In a small way he was an interesting peg on the spectrum mentioned earlier.  He was a professor for the graduate school yet he was our connection to all of these on-the-ground ministries and he knew all about them.  He also gave some interesting insight to the direction that Moody Bible Institute has been taking recently in terms of the academic and the practical.

Meeting Dr. J was our first stop which took us to Moody.  We had a little time to walk around and see the D.L. Moody museum that the school has.  This added more food for my thoughts.  Moody was known for being a little more on the charismatic side, a little more on the Armenianist side, and relatively uneducated.  But his school, now some 125+ years later now leans more fundamentalist and Calvinist as it has further become a celebrated educational institute.  Is this due to a theological trend or swing?  Or could it be that when the focus turns to theological education more than evangelism or practical theology we see these changes?

Let me be clear, I'm not saying that D.L. Moody would be disappointed with where we are now.  He might have known that this would happen and actually wanted this for future ministers.  Or maybe he just wanted sound biblical training, uncaring of theological bias, and this is what history has brought us too.  Honestly, I have not done in-depth study of Moody or the school, but this is what I have picked up from fellow students who have done more research than I.

After seeing Moody a bit (something I have done before) and meeting Dr. J, we began to have busy days running around Chicago visiting different kinds of ministries and meeting different people.  The thing that everyone that we met with had in common was passion for the work of God to be done in their context.  We met Sarah who works for an after school program in Cabrini Green called By the Hand.  She is a single woman originally from Kentucky who sought to work in one of the more difficult places in Chicago.  She gave her life to this ministry, so much so that she adopted a couple of young boys who had a more extreme family situation.

We visited another after school program that was in Cabrini Green, but since the gentrification of the area, they moved to south Chicago to help out that area.  The after school program helps kids in the poor Chicago Public School system aspire to do better than their environment often equips them for.  When we were there the program was celebrating that one of its eighth graders recently tested well enough to go to a sponsored school- which is much better than continuing on in the public schools.  It was a really rewarding experience because we got to hang out and help some of the kids in the program.  These were some of the wittiest, funniest kids that I have ever met.  I didn't realize how my west coast inspired style would not translate to south Chicago.  I had a lot of the kids gawk and ask me about my plugs, long hair, and tattoo... which they would then continue to laugh at.  But it was cool how that was an easy ice breaker which allowed us to enjoy helping the kids do their homework, read, have a brief bible lesson, and then, of course, play some dodgeball.

Briefly, for those who are unfamiliar with gentrification what I learned from the trip is that it is the reversal of the "white flight".  In history there was the movement of affluent people out of the downtown city areas to the suburbs to escape some of the downtown culture that was being created by the pull of industry.  But recently culture has turned its eye back on cities as they are becoming less of a focus of huge manufacturing plants and other factories and more of focus for rising businesses.  Gentrification is the term of the affluent coming back to the cities, relocating government issued housing, and spending a ton of money in making those once run down areas into trendy, urban places friendly for tourists and upper middle aged business people.  If I seem to be presenting this in a positive or negative light, I do not mean too.  I am, rightfully or wrongfully, taking the perspective of unbiased, objective history. It has both positive and negative effects on different groups of people.  Until one becomes intimate with the context and issue, it is hard to know what the right and best course of action is.

One of the other more unique experiences that we had was we witnessed a very different discipleship group.  This was probably one of the most directly intellectually stimulating times of the trip.  We were with very intelligent people who were very aware of culture and Christianity.  They had taken "life together" to the next level.  From what I gathered they at least met once a week to share a meal and catch up in their group which was around 8-10ish people (which they considered was getting "too big"), but they also made it a point to get involved in each others lives out side of the group and talked about meeting regularly outside in one on one or smaller group situations.  They would do everything from just getting coffee to talk or going to see a movie.  They were intentional about speaking into what was occurring in each others lives whether it was big things like general life direction or smaller situations that happened at work, school, or in their families.

What was unclear about this group was whether or not they considered themselves a church and I believe this is where the tension for some in our group lied.  This is where all my study of eccliesology would come into play.  Encountering this group led to questions such as; "what is necessary for a church?", "what is the church?", "what is required from the church?".  Some of them did also attend a gathering of believers on Sunday, some did not.  When I asked the organizer of this discipleship program (that is occurring in different areas of the U.S. as well as a group overseas I believe) about the history and development of this... thing for lack of a better word he gave a brief personal history of his work as a senior pastor of a couple churches.  When trying to bring a similar discipleship program into the church it was evidently like oil and water, it ended up making a group that were in the discipleship primarily and a group primarily going to church.  I regret not having more time to talk with him more and find out why he thinks that was the situation, but it is a talk for the future.

This brings a lot of pertinent questions in Christianity today.  People are becoming nervous of things like the New Perspective on Paul and the influence it has on theological and church movements such as the emerging and emergent church.  I believe we need to realize that we have a great debt to our history but we also have a great responsibility to our future and we need to bring those two together when discussing the appropriateness in our action as Christians.  What is necessary for a church?  How far should we stretch people in certain spiritual disciplines?  How important are certain forms of worship over others?  How much of preference (theological and practical) plays into our distinctions?  Can we maintain minor distinctions and also our unity as the Universal Church?  People have struggled and are struggling with these questions.  Do not feel overwhelmed.  Pray and humbly seek God's word and wise counsel because if history has anything to say we probably won't get it perfect in our generation either.

On Sunday we went to six or seven different churches. We visited four "high" churches (Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, and Greek Orthodox) and some "low" churches that were in various areas of Chicago.  Being in different buildings and witnessing the various different forms of worship was an awesome experience.  If you have not done something like that where you live, I strongly suggest that you do so.

Overall the trip was extremely useful.  I engaged in thoughts that I will continue to wrestle with for my foreseeable future and also got to meet a ton of passionate people filling a need that God has burdened on their heart.  I just would like to thank those that gave me support for going on this trip and the professors that gave understanding for the missed classes.  I hope this gave you some things to think about.  Please feel free to contact me or leave a comment to talk more about the things discussed here.  I am very much a fan of learning as a conversation.

To those who read this all and are praying for me and others mentioned in this post, God bless.

(A part of graduating from Moody Bible Institute requires that you serve as an intern.  I am currently serving my internship at New Community Church and this is a reflection from a retreat that the interns currently took this past weekend.)


It's hard for me to describe what happened to me during Urban Plunge.  It's an exposure trip to try to get us to recognize a part of Spokane that we tend to turn a blind eye too.  I've grown up to good parents who occasionally participated in feeding the poor and helping out in homes for single mothers in tough situations.  I've been a part of youth group trips to the poorest part of the country and we would help out in soup kitchens in Des Moines.  Needless to say, there's not a ton of shock value, but the trip was a special look into a city that I haven't had a lot of time to get to know.  It showed what made Spokane special from the places I'd already been.

Before I get into what made this special, I want to give an overview for what the weekend was like.  The interns were directed to not eat lunch before we met at the church around 3 PM.  From there we walked to various ministries.  When we got there we received a little tour and Q&A time and then in some small way would help out.  We stayed the night in a building owned by a ministry called Cup of Cool Water and from there we handed out meals.  The next day we did the same thing, going to a couple of ministries and then helping out.  I parted ways with the group because I had to work.

So what makes Urban Plunge special?  What did I notice?  For whatever reasons, I heard a consistent theme in what our tour guides would explain in the way their ministry operates- relationship.  A little part of me felt like the writer of Ecclesiastes ("Vanity! It's all vanity!") when it came to the multiple programs offered by multiple organizations all seemingly doing the same thing day in and day out.  But what made the difference in the all-too-fleeting food, money, clothing, and shelter mean anything was the relationships that it built.  Ralph, a man we met in the kitchen of the House of Charity, was a prime example of this;
"I was out there [the cafeteria] only a few years ago," he said as he showed me how to slice and dice some vegetables, "But I got connected and started working in here.  Now I'm working at another restaurant..."

A deeper aspect of this is that relationships are not a solution to the problem of poverty.  I fear there might not be an ultimate answer in the sense of bringing an end to an evil that corrupts our planet.  It is more of an opportunity to change.  If we think that there is an answer to this situation we would be in danger of neglecting the reality of the consequences of sin and the person's volition in their life.  But if we see it as an opportunity for God to be present on earth through our love for His people, then I think things of eternal consequence will occur.

But the truth of the importance of relationships is merely amplified in the Urban Plunge.  Think about your own life.  How many times are we saved by those around us from decisions that harm us- even when we perceive they don't matter or are even beneficial.  When you take relationships away or have detrimental relationships, we in turn suffer; may be not to the same extreme... but may be.  Who knows what I could make of my life without accountability?  How much discipline is inherent in me, in you?

Part of being at Moody Bible Institute is that they require you do an internship.  If you're lucky you will be able to participate in at a church like mine, but that may not happen because mine is pretty rad.  But the pastor of my church had the interns read Henri Nouwen's In the Name of Jesus.  If you have not read this book and are either curious about what leadership in Christianity looks like or you are a Christian leader then this book is a great resource.  It's a very quick read so there is little excuse not to try to find it and use it to think.

I just wanted to share what I thought was one of the most potent excerpts;

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible?  Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.  It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.  Jesus asks, 'Do you love me?'  We ask, 'Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?' (Matthew 20:21).  Ever since the Snake said, 'The day you eat of this tree your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil' (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power.  Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross.  The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.  Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints.

One thing is clear to me: The temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat.  Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead.  Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. [p.77-9]

The past couple days Moody Bible Institute- Spokane hosted its annual missions conference.  I have to say in the past 8 or 9 years that I have been able to go to missions conferences (or forced by my parents/school... another blog for another time), this was the best experience I had.  The speaker was entertaining and got his big idea across and the seminars were insightful, at least the ones I visited.  But it once again got me thinking about missions today-- What is the most frequent type?  What does missions look like with today's advances in technology and education?  What is most people's experience with missions?  What do most of these agencies actually want from us?

All of these questions led me to something that I hold dear to my heart but I also something that I have a burning in my heart against.  I am a cynic of Short Term missions.  And it is not because I read blogs or posts and base an opinion on those because it is the hip thing to do in contemporary bible school to hate short term missions.  It is because I've been on short terms missions trips.   But before I tell you why I am a cynic of short term missions (or STM from here on out) let me throw some stats your way.

In 2008, The Barna Group did a survey of STM trips.  Because the Barna group only interviewed the Americans that went on the trips, the data collected was from the perspective of the person going on STMs.  Despite my view on STM, this data is encouraging for it shows the eagerness of people willing to go out and serve outside of their comfort zone for at least a little while.


Who takes short term mission trips?

• 9% of American adults
  >> only 3.5% of American adults went in the last 5 years
• 11% of churchgoers
• 23% evangelical Christians
• 12% of Mosaics (ages 18-24)
• 9% of Busters (ages 25-43)
• 7% of Boomers (ages 44-62)
• 9% of Elders (ages 63+)

How do short-term mission trips affect those who go?

• 75% say the experience changed their life in some way
• 25% say it helped them become more aware of other people’s struggles
• 16% say it taught them more about poverty, justice, or the world
• 11% say it increased their compassion
• 9% say it enriched their faith
• 9% say it broadened their spiritual understanding
• 5% say it boosted their financial generosity  

[qtd in "The Truth About Short Term Missions" here]

With these stats I just wanted to show the benefit to those who go to them and to make a point that maybe STM are more about exposure of people to the cultures and situations that happen outside of their own church experience, rather than (greater) benefiting the people they go to serve.  Don't get me wrong, there are ways that STM is done well, mostly when the agency or church has a continued presence in the area they choose to do STMs in.  But for the most part, the greater impact happens on those who go rather than those who receive.  Whether this is true across the boards in missions is debatable, but in the area of short term missions the tension is clearer.

In an issue of Hard Music Magazine (HM), the front man of the Christian band Showbread, Josh Porter (Josh Dies, stage name), wrote an article on his reflection from a short term missions trip.  He talks about the experience of raising the money as the band toured and then being able to go and help out an orphanage.  But the thing that Porter emphasized was the debriefing at the end of the trip with the pastor that hosted the group throughout the missions trip.  The pastor had in some way made a statement about the cost of bringing the entire group down there and what that money could have been used for, but having them their to help was just as much of a joy to him.  But what Porter seemed to take away was the question of where is the line in going on trip versus truly helping the people?

That, I believe, is the question that is all too forgotten before we embark on missions trips.  We lack true reflection on whether we are actually helping-- are our missions trips truly acts of love and goodwill towards others?  This question is not an easy one.  To explain why I am a cynic and why this is a hard subject let me tell you a story.

The church that I went to in jr. high and high school was a part of this STM called Rosebud (now The Lakota Journey) that goes into the Lakota reservation in South Dakota and helps out the community there (to give you some background information, this reservation covers the two poorest counties in the United States.  It is also the Native American group descended from the people talked about in the book I Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee, which I would suggest reading).  We partner with a church and we do service for the neighborhood and congregants during the day and then in the evenings we gather all the kids we can and have kids club.  This was something our church did every summer and we had made relationships with the church and all the kids that went.  Many of us in the youth group would try to remain in contact with the kids by writing letters throughout the rest of the year.  It was a great experience and some of my greatest memories will be from that reservation in South Dakota.

Most of our youth group was connected to the biggest church in this town and would hold a kids club that would host 100+ kids the five nights it was open.  But I was a part of a small team that would drive further out into the middle of nowhere to this small community called Horse Creek.  It was so much better than the other group, but I'm a little biased.  We were able to drive in and set up for our meeting, but then we would personally walk around the big oval that made up the entire community and personally pick up every kid for kids club.  We got really close to all of the kids, which is the case for most people in situations like these, but I feel like ours was special.  There was one girl in particular that I got close to.  Her name is Yvonne.  The first year we went to Horse Creek she was 5 years old.  She would always ask to ride on my shoulders, she would hold on to my leg as I spoke to the whole group, she would hide behind me when had our water balloon fights, she told me about how her home was, she told me about things I didn't know 5 year old girls experienced.  I told her about Jesus and the safety and comfort that He could bring even though things were hard and didn't make sense.  It was always hard leaving at the end of the week and there were always tears on both sides, but it made those reunions the next year greater.  And it was strange how we were able to pick up right where we left off and get deeper and deeper into these kids lives.  That's what made it special.

My senior year rolled around and as we were prepping for the trip, the group that went to Horse Creek was pulled aside and told some hard news.  There was a smaller church that was joining the organization and they wanted us to take this year to integrate their group into taking over the kids club at Horse Creek-- this was our last year there.  I can't find words that would justly emulate the feelings for you here.  Not only was it going to be hard realizing that this was my senior year, meaning it would be harder to go on the trip anyway with the demands of college, but even if I went back I would not be going back to Horse Creek, to Yvonne.

When we pulled in the first day there was a surreal feeling hovering over our heads and that was before it hit us that we would have to tell these kids that this was our last year with them.  When we were walking around to pick up the kids we got to Yvonne's door.  I knocked like I had so many times before and there she came to the door, a few inches taller but the same as I remembered.  She threw open the door, almost hitting me, and then flew into my arms, almost taking me down.  We met up with the rest of the group walking around the circle.  Like every other time, she got up on my shoulders and I asked her how her year was, "It was good, but I missed you."  That was her first words to me.  That is how she summed up her year.  She missed me.

The last night that we were on the reservation our entire youth group met to debrief before we met for our nightly gathering with the other churches participating in the missions trip.  As normal, many tears were shed for having to leave this community that we love again, but as you can imagine there were six of us who were shedding more tears than normal.  It was then and there that I confronted a thought in me-- if the best way for these kids to get closer to God and create a more solid relationship with Him was without me, I'd hope that they would forget me altogether to leave more room for Christ.  The sorrow that I felt in having to leave Yvonne should not matter compared to what the Lord wills for both of us.

Here's the big idea-  I want to be a blessing and more of a help on my missions trips.  I do not want to be there if it would be more valuable for that people to send money instead.  I think our care for people can be questioned if we are not there truly for the people.  Are STMs truly caring for the people?  Is that the truest way to show God's love to that people?  In some cases, maybe.  But I'm urging you to ask the questions.   I sit here and I ask questions and take a painstaking critical eye to missions because I want to love the best I can.

So yes, I am a cynic of missions and specifically STMs.  And you can look at cynical me and shake your head and say in your head that I don't get it.  But I'm a cynic for Yvonne.  Because this is the best I can do for her, and all of those she represents, now.  So I will continue to do it.

This post I want to direct my message to a specific grouping of people, actually two groups of people, both of which I am connected. Artists and Christians please pay attention to what I have to say and examine the weight of my words and the directness of their meaning because this post strikes at the heart of bad art and bad theology (which will directly affect your relationship with God [knowledge-> belief-> value-> behavior]). I especially hope that Moody Bible Institute students and prospective students are finding this blog (as it is connected to Moody's website) so they may see this post and take it into consideration as they go about their careers representing Christ, Moody, and the churches in which they serve.

When we enter a church, whether that's through our established Christian family or being born again and entering the church later on, we tend to develop a specialized language. I like to refer to this language as "christianese". I would hope that most of this is based on scripture but, being recycled through years of teaching, they become trite maxims and sayings that we take for granted and we don't quite fully understand. First of all I want to say that it makes it really exciting when you study scripture and you discover the deeper, truer meaning of things you've been saying and it renders you to tears because of the weight of it's entirety. But the thing that becomes dangerous is that if this is all that we are displaying to each other then we are in danger of not saying anything at all and the words in which we use to try to communicate to each other become more symbols for sentiments rather than characters of literal meaning. In other words, we lose the power behind what we try to say.

I know this first hand because I was that kid. I've grown up in churches. I went to a Christian school seventh grade through senior year of high school. I go to Moody Bible Institute. I'm a youth ministry major! I know what people try to say when they say some misplaced Christian phrase because I understand the sentiment they're trying to communicate, even if their words betray their own beliefs. But that's the problem, I know what you're trying to say because of my past and my knowledge of the context in which you are speaking out of. But what happens when someone not acquainted with Christianity, or just doesn't have the same Christian education as you do, hears you speak or sees something you post on your blog (facebook, twitter, etc)? We end up communicating with sentiments than words, and I would argue that this is not only limiting your audience but ultimately making the weight of words in which you speak weaker, and also marking the Church with the same weakness (and thus causing you to be less effective in your message).

***

Before I go further, let me bring in artists, because I fully realize (and hope) that there may be some artists reading this blog that have (and want) nothing to do with a god. As artists, we can do the same thing, specifically when we attempt to use language and symbols. Paintings, photographs and the like are unique because they attempt to use pictures/symbols to display a message or a sentiment. The danger is when the artist claims that their art has a meaning that has no historically cultural or contextual significance- they end up just blurring the communication. I have approached this topic before in a previous post entitled "The Tragedy of Subjectivism and Art".

In literature or music- anywhere actual words are used- we can run the same danger of using "christianese" but in a more general sense. The term used with this (and the thing that causes the struggle in me) is what Mark Hoppus claimed was "artistic license" when speaking about a line in a +44 song referring to then ex-band mate Tom Delongue that mentioned, "this isn't just goodbye/ this is I can't stand you" (http://youtu.be/3RFUcncOFR4). And in literature there is hyperbole, understatement and Irony that can be used to enhance the message trying to be portrayed. But I believe there is a fine balance in abusing this "artistic license" and using it to help creatively express oneself. Poor art runs the danger of saying nothing at all when it resorts to just stringing together clever phrases and poor analogies that do not give justice to the actual message.

In my mind it comes back to the platonic theory of ideas. There is behind everything an ultimate form of what we experience. So if we see the beauty in a sunset that is an expression of the abstract idea of what we believe beauty is. Plato would say that we see examples of beauty and the more we collect and experience gives us a better picture of the ultimate form of beauty. Where I see the connection is that art is mostly an indirect means of communication and good art is to be able to creatively communicate a message. But if the medium is muddled you lose the message. If the example of the form is weak, you have a harder time grasping the form itself, or are misled entirely.

***

Now the questions that both groups have to ask; what is the purpose of your communication? Who are you trying to communicate too? What are you trying to communicate? Is this being effectively achieved in the language that you use?

I become very passionate about this topic because I see something a little more sinister happening. Rather than the reason behind this problem being naivety or immaturity, I feel like it becomes more of a dishonesty.

In regards to people in any religion, some people use religious language because that's what they've grown up in and that's all they know in regards to verbally relating to God, other spiritual beings- even people as spiritual persons (this is the naivety and immaturity I was referring to previously). But I don't believe that's the case, especially when people mature and can reflect. I think we need to realize what we're saying and actually have something to back up our words. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Sometimes when I ask a Christian friend how he/she is doing I get a similar response; "I'm doing so good. The Lord has blessed me so much and He is so good to me". Wow, what a response! But this would lead me to ask what is happening in their life to get such an enthusiastic response and they would return, "God has really just been humbling me lately and really showing me His glory". Now this example is extreme, but that's because I wanted you to have a clear understanding of the use of religious language I'm talking about. In that conversation, what was really said? Do I really know what's going on in that persons life? Or do I just have the general idea?

This is when it becomes dangerous. That type of religious language lacks an amount of reality that makes anyone able to connect. I don't know what's really going on in that persons life. I don't know if there is a struggle producing that humility or if it's simply meditation on scripture. I don't know if there is anything I should be concerned about, but from that conversation I would be led to believe that the person is doing really well. Dishonesty can be bred from this ambiguity of language, and unfortunately that is what I have experienced as of late.

In all my experiences, both of myself and of others, this type of language is a front- the root of which could be multiple things from trying to project what we think we should be or projecting what we think others expect from us. It is not based on reality, is not honest, and, in the end, not edifying, sanctifying or helpful- we end up creating a vacuum for all the things we wished to achieve.

In art, it is almost the same reason people use over-dramatic language- they are posing to be something. They want to be artists to be artists rather than being artists to produce art. Vanity is such a simple thing but the consequences are immense.

The reason why I tend to be so critical and cynical on this topic is; one, I've found this struggle in myself in my darkest times and, two, I find it hard to believe that people can't realize the dichotomy between the life of their words and of their actions. There can come a point where we find ourselves saying one thing and we don't even feel the sentiment in which we've been trained to convey, let alone believe the meaning of the words we're saying.

This is the tragedy of when words lose their meaning. We find ourselves alone, struggling to communicate even with our own souls.

(For a more researched look into religious language, pick up the first ever Soma, Moody's first peer-reviewed, academic editorial. I'll be having a two part article in the first two issues of this quarterly publication!)