Replacement Definitions

Leadership Journal Winter 2006 issue

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My daughter will never eat Spam. Sometime between my childhood and hers, the canned pseudo-ham product became an unwanted e-mail ad. Likewise, "surfing" involves a mouse, and she'll experience "hotspots" long before menopause.

The exponential expansion of technologies means that "English is probably changing faster than any other language," notes linguist Alan Firth. But the overnight creation and redefinition of English words (I just discovered my cell phone might be blue-jacked) has traditionalists alarmed.

Prince Charles, for example, has launched a campaign to preserve "English English." With restrained royal indignation, the prince says, "People tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn't be. I think we have to be a bit careful, otherwise the whole thing can get rather a mess." To make his case, perhaps he should start a blog.

For decades church leaders have sought to make the language of faith more accessible to those outside the church. Terms once common to Christians have fallen out of use, and new phrases emerge. The worship service has become a celebration. The church building a campus. And, the authoritative sermon is now a helpful talk.

We've reevaluated the usefulness of many words, but are we now in danger of creating a royal mess? Few may lament the loss of cumbersome theological terms like propitiation, but what about words like grace, disciple, and even love.

Philosopher Dallas Willard is concerned. "The really good language of the Bible has been compromised," he told a group in Chicago recently. "People assume they understand the meaning of words we use all the time, but they really don't."

Simple theological words like salvation and disciple have, according to Willard, been hijacked by the consumer culture and their definitions morphed beyond biblical identification.

When pastors employ these words in the context of spiritual formation (i.e. discipleship), they may intend one meaning, but people receive it differently. Or, more tragic, the rich biblical meaning of these words may be lost on church leaders who themselves have been fed a diet of theological clichés.

Our ability to communicate the truths of the faith, Willard says, has been compromised and our mission to make disciples stalled.

Willard's solution is twofold.

First, reclaim and redefine the words of God that everyone assumes they understand. For example, grace is commonly believed to be God's forgiveness that takes away the guilt of our sins. This overused definition, Willard asserts, has warped our understanding of the Christian life into one of "sin management."

He advocates a more biblical definition of grace as God acting in our lives to accomplish what we cannot do on our own. With this understanding, he says, people will see that even if they have no known sin, they still need God's grace, and that will transform the focus of their discipleship.

Second, adapt new words to replace those whose definitions are lost beyond recovery. This explains why he will often employ the word apprentice as a substitute for disciple, and prefers the phrase true inner goodness in place of the biblical (and skater) word righteous.

We need to be more deliberate than ever about the words we choose. Recovering the "really good language of the Bible" is critical to fulfilling our mission of making disciples (I mean, apprentices) of Jesus Christ.

Dallas Willard's New Dictionary

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