Yesterday, I put a comment on my Facebook wall noting that if someone uses the word “blessing,” I automatically tune them out. I was smiling as I left the comment, but I was aware that my annoyance with the cliché runs deep, and I thought I might perhaps flesh out my thoughts here.
I grew up Christian. For as long as I can remember, everyone around me talked “God-talk.” They used words like “blessing,” “standards,” “principles,” and “Gospel” until I knew them inside out and backward and exactly which nuance of which sermon they referred to. But after a year in Bible college with “God” on the lips and the brain and the tests and the obligation – and rarely in the LIVES of the people who surrounded me – I entered the “teenage years” of my faith. It was time for me to discover Him for myself, to see if He would be my own, if what I’d grown up being taught to believe was really worth believing.
From the time I was a little kid, my dad told me not to use words whose meanings I didn’t know, and as annoyed as I was with him at the time, it is a rule that has stood me in good stead.
As I dug deep into Scripture and discovered the truth behind the clichés I knew inside-out and backward, I also discovered a lot about Christian languaging that had nothing at all to do with God, Christ, or the truth of the Gospel that people had boiled down to a “sinner’s prayer” and a life that could only be reformed by taking certain steps. There were words and phrases and spiritual ideas I had used and believed that weren’t even CONCEPTUALLY found in Scripture.
The standardized vocabulary I grew up with had made faith into little more than religion – and completely rerouted my focus from the righteousness of Christ to my own performance.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of people who mean well, whose hearts are in the right place, and who truly do know God who use God-talk every day and mean it from the depths of their souls with the Truth alive in them. But there are others who drop those words idly – to sound spiritual, to maintain their “testimony,” to paste God onto their own ideas of right and wrong. These are the people who don’t know what grace is – and who need it so very desperately.
But for myself, I made a commitment not to let God-talk fall idly from my lips, or from my fingers. I firmly, deeply believe that my life is my testimony. Jesus Christ dying for me, a sinner – He is my testimony. The only thing that makes me any different from Jane Non-Christian is the fact that I believe He is all I need.
Christianity isn’t a cloak I put on after I put in my “sinner’s prayer” ticket into eternity. It’s not a set of standards and principles, or a brand new language. It’s not going to church or going to the mission field. Christianity – or eternal life – is “knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.”
The more we come know God in Christ, the more we are transformed as He renews our minds – but I think Christians are scared to believe that He will actually do the work He says He will do in us. We want to “make God smile,” show ourselves approved unto Him, so we lay our very person-hood aside for a standardized ideal that has very little to do with God and everything to do with what other Christians think of us and our walk with Him.
We can mean well all day long, but the fact remains that God still wants our hearts, not merely our duty – and He’s willing to suspend duty (see Jesus’ response about breaking the Sabbath) to get to the root of our deepest need. Whether we acknowledge it now or when we meet Him face to face, we’ve got NOTHING to offer Him. Period. This is why He meets us where we are.
I think Christians – and Church people – invest more in worldly thinking and conversation than most non-Christians. It scares me to death that I think this. Because I know exactly what I would have thought of me thinking that ten years ago. And I know that I have a LOT of healing still to do from wounds I received from other Christians who attempted to make me conform to their standardized words and doctrine.
I’m not mad at God anymore because I’ve learned it wasn’t him. I’m not even mad at the Christians who hurt me anymore. I have good relationships with many Christians who DO use “God-talk” and mean it with all their hearts, knowing Him true and real.
But I still can’t willingly participate in or subject myself to it. These harmless, spiritual words are deeply offensive to me because I have so often seen them misused and abused and used as a front for pride, condemnation, and a super-spirituality that has nothing at all to do with God.
I am slowly learning to give grace and bear with others, but I shy away from God-talk because there is nothing in this world that will cause me to judge someone more quickly than overused Christian clichés. I’m willing to say that it is not them; it is my own sin I’m fleeing by keeping boundaries in this area, and I’m laying full claim to God-grace for all parties involved, recognizing that only He knows the hearts and He died – and lives – for all of us.
Even words of grace must be seasoned with salt, but there is too much salt that has no savor. Tell me what you really mean – not just what you’re supposed to say. There is more of Him in the truth than in the same words everybody is allowed to say. If you’re talking Him in you, I’m wide-open to your heart.
Kelly, thanks for this. You say it well. I lead a small group of women in conversation. We are learning from Jesus example of conversations to disciple from the book Tell it Slant by Peterson and the topic of God-talk came up. It’s insidious and we don’t realize how much we alienate people by the words we use so casually as Christians. I am trying to be better. And will definitely think twice now before using the word blessing. thanks!
Thank you for once again being willing to speak even if the words may go against the grain of some…
I want my words to be “real” as well, from my heart and God’s.
This is going to keep me thinking today, girlfriend. Thanks for it. I sure want to talk Him in me.
Kelly, it’s what I tell my kids all the time: “Tell me what you really feel, not what you think I want to hear.” I want my kids’ hearts, not their outward obedience, and I think its the same with God. He longs for our honest heart-to-heart connection, honesty in the hard, the good, the frustrating, the beautiful. Because truth connects, and He already knows it all anyway.
So much hurt in this fallen world of ours. Glad you were willing to speak truth today. There is nothing more beautiful.
This is really great, Kelly! I too grew up with the same Christianspeakese that you are referring to and have the same issues. So good to hear that I’m not the only one. 🙂
Can I tell you I’m glad you took this into further conversation than the Facebook status? Because I am. In fact, you and I had a long discussion about it while I was on the road yesterday. Except, umm. You weren’t in my car. So, well, I’m hoping that makes sense. (I do some of my best thinking behind the wheel, you know.)
Anyway. We have destroyed many a deep and powerful word — both in religious language and that of general use — by its overuse and misuse and flippant use. I find myself wanting to use a word like “bless” because of what I know it to mean, in its original depth, and can’t find another way to crank it out with that same strength of meaning, capturing all of the rich depth of His good gift. And even as that word, or another we’ve diminished, patters across the keyboard, I know it sounds bland and insipid and I may as well have said nothing at all.
And what I wonder is this: how else do we say some of these things? Do we make new words? I’m thinking of my translation work, and when there isn’t an equivalent, or it escapes me, and I have to speak all around a word to get to it. Do we become interpreters for ourselves, speaking less in single-word labels and more in many-words that describe meaning? Do we have the patience for that? Do we endeavor to use them for what they once intended to mean and try to restore their flavor and worth? But it seems we do damage to dialogue by misusing words as well as by clicking off when the language sends us in an unwanted direction.
I don’t know. You weren’t in the car so I couldn’t finish my thought… 😉
I like where you’re going with this. Keep hacking at it.
Well, each to her own 🙂 I can see where you are coming from and appreciate your emotion on this subject. I use the word blessing alot; as a pagan, I think the world is chock-full of blessings, holy grace, divine glory – they’re as common and incredible as dirt. I personally feel using such words often empowers them with their daily wonder, their ordinariness which is the greates gift of all.
So there’s another perspective 😉 The people who are overusing these words may not even be Christian, or Scriptural Christian, or your kind of Christian, or they may not be of an American culture. They may be pagan or some other spirituality, they may have a different culture, and they may see the world and language in a very different way.
I love the photo accompanying this post – but it almost seems redundant to say so. I love all your photos 🙂
Church speak. I’m familiar with it, and it’s standing out in my language more and more. I try to curb it, say it real, and be honest. It’s hard. Sometimes I have to even look at what it is I really mean, which I didn’t realize I meant, and consider if that is what in fact I meant to say. Blessing. Sometimes I wonder. What is a blessing after all? And how do I not diminish them when they come?
I hope I have never offended you with my ‘words’ … to me to say ‘blessings to you’ means I am praying God blesses you abundantly and keep you safe and protected. Never even thought words could mean ‘different’ things to different people. Just know my heart is right and I do ‘pray for you and your business’…to do well.
Part of me kind of understands your feelings on this subject. I was deeply entrenched in church-speak myself, in another lifetime. The other part of me is confused, though, because I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a negative connotation of the word “blessing”. Or maybe I’m just misunderstanding you, and you just meant that church people tend to overuse the word “blessing”? I really mean this in total innocence–I’m not trying to pick an internet fight. 🙂 I think maybe I am a bit disconnected, because I’ve been away from the mainstream church for quite a while now. (I’ve been attending Messianic Jewish synagogues for the past four years or so.) Although we are believers in Jesus, the culture and lingo are somewhat different. “Blessing” may not have the same flavor as in a Protestant church.
good words gone bad. in other words…words misused and abused can change their meanings or make them meaningless. there are some words that are much easier to say than to live-up to. there are only a few words that are hard to say. for instance “i’m sorry” can be tough for most people to spit out.
i understand why certain words have become what they have become. sometimes i think we need to make up some new ones and let go of the old ones.
have a sweet beach pink day.
i agree, also, that it would be nice if more of us could say what we mean.
oh, one more thing, speaking of changing words… i have decided to go with “davis” instead of using nancy or maire.
davis is my second middle name, my pre-marriage last name, the name my husband has always used, and the name everyone used in high school. i an mow going by davis. just sayin’ i will have to do a post on it i suppose…
I appreciate this post, and, I use the word blessing. I am not offended at all. I did worry for a few moments, and want to pour over every past comment and strike any use of the word blessing from the list. And then I kind of let it all sink in. And Sarah’s comment, about using the word even as a pagan brings it all round for me. You see, I have an abhorrence of what I (and others I am sure), term Christianese; words and phrases that are particular to the Christian faith. For example, born again, which is now not only particular to the Christian faith, but a term non-believers use to describe those crazy Christians. And here’s the irony of that sentence…non-believer is another perfect example of Christianese, and I just used it! I’ve had conversations with people where I know an outsider would wonder what planet they’d just landed on, and I am very uncomfortable with that exclusiveness.
But, back to Sarah’s comment; I appreciate it, because I tend to use the word blessing because I think my friends from a different faith or spirituality will get it. They will understand that I want them to experience favor or happiness. But, I also have known my share of people who use that word almost as an “um” or a “you know”. So, I get it. I also get the heart of what I believe is being shared. It’s not about the particular word you use or over use….it’s your heart.