Marva J. Dawn writes in “Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down”:<\/p>\n\n
I remember an animated discussion with my high school freshman English teacher over the word awful<\/em>. I insisted on using awe-full<\/em> to describe something so exalted as to arouse reverence. She preferred that I stick with the word's common spelling and its usage to designate something dreadful.<\/p>\n\n We should have looked in the dictionary. My old Webster's<\/em> lists as its first definition "inspiring awe; highly impressive." Not until its fourth entry does it supply the definition usually assumed in idiomatic English: "very bad, ugly, unpleasant."<\/p>\n\n But the teacher had the final word that day in class. Even at age 14 I felt that a vital perception was being lost—the sense that something, someone, was higher than we. I longed to verbalize awe-full-ness; my teacher made class awful.<\/p>\n\n Today teenagers apply the related word awesome<\/em> to clothes, food, music, and cinematic effects. The word is so overused that when people sing Rich Mullins's "Awesome God," they seem to trivialize the Awe-full One and put the Trinity on the same level as toothpaste and togs.<\/p>\n\n As our culture has worked hard to establish equality among persons, we've somehow put God into that parity and gradually reduced our sense that this is a breathtakingly transcendent GOD<\/em> we're talking about.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3455,3465,3907,3921,4064,4166,4283,4329,4414,4563,4565,4671,4699,5290,5305],"tax_ctp_topics":[382],"class_list":["post-45211","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-attributes-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-awe","tax_ctp_tags-exaltation-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-experiencing-god","tax_ctp_tags-glory-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-honoring-god","tax_ctp_tags-irreverence","tax_ctp_tags-knowing-god","tax_ctp_tags-majesty-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-omnipotence-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-omniscience-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-power-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-presence-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-wonder","tax_ctp_tags-worship"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"\n