At some point in my life, soon after I realized being a famous writer wasn't exactly a career for which I could just fill out an application and accept the position, there was a brief flicker of desire in me to be a linguist. I don't now remember how long that desire lasted, but I know that it was on my mind for enough of my freshman year of high school that I wrote a research paper about linguists and the study of language. Something extinguished the dream fairly quickly; the absolute ineptitude I brought to beginning Spanish class probably had a lot to do with the quelling of that aspiration.
While I can barely manage “hello” and numbers in Spanish, I realize today that I am still a linguist at heart. Words matter to me. Deeply. The term "semantics" and the quest of language quibblers to find exactly the right words to express ideas and concepts perfectly fascinates me. Even the term "semantics" has a spectrum of meanings and uses. As I use it here, I know that it denotes other meanings than the one I mean, and while that fact frustrates me, it also exhilarates me.
I suddenly realized a moment ago that one of the biggest barriers I face when it comes to matters of faith is a huge wall of words. I stumble over vocabulary, and I quibble over expressions. (Ironically since I can appreciate cliches,) I choke on trite phrases that I've heard and read repeated too many times. When it comes to faith, I question any sentence that is easy to say, anything memorized, anything "learned by heart." I sit in judgment in my pew over terms that don't sit well with me, cry in fits of rage over words people say that I believe have lost their meaning, and scour my Bible, books, and the Internet in a never-ending search for information that might somehow satisfy my impossible desire to know for sure that the words I read in Scripture really do mean what I think they mean. I distrust the interpretations of others, and my instinct is to reject completely any interpretation that is commonly accepted because I fear all meaning has been skewed too much to be believed.
Suddenly now I wonder if my problem with my faith is not disbelief in its actual core but dissatisfaction with the way it is commonly expressed. Am I really just arguing over semantics? Is it really God and Christianity that causes my incredulity or am I really just a cynic when it comes to the words? I want meaning. I have to find the genuine meaning, the intended meaning, the God-inspired meaning if there is one. I don't want my meaning or someone else's. It's not just that I want someone to write and speak more eloquently, not that this is just a petty protest over words. It's a deep-down desire for meaning perfectly expressed so that it can be understood and lived out. I don't want to be confused. I don't want to find out that I misunderstood, that I memorized and spat out the right words my whole life but didn't truly grasp the meaning.
Funny, here's how I'll end this in total irony--
No wonder I am this way. From my learning of Luther’s Small Catechism, I have taken as my own without realizing it, not the answers but the repeated question of the catechism, which is, after all-- "What does this mean?"
So my impossible questions is: What if there isn't the God intended or inspired meaning? Is there absolute? Is is just something that we will always desire and never find? Can we find it in part but never completely? I always hate the typical answer to that question, because it's always, "Well, Rachel, that's what we call faith". Really? Is that really what "Faith" is? It feel like what they are really saying is, "Whatever you don't know the answer to, just accept it because you have "faith". " There has to be something more or deeper to this idea of faith. So many more thoughts...
ReplyDeleteP.S. You absolutely wrote and phrased your thoughts and questions extremely well! Very well communicated.
"That's what we call faith." That sentence is exactly one of my problems, Rachel! It's so easy to say, but what if it's a huge cop-out? I can choose to have faith that I will fly if I jump off the roof, and I can believe fervently that my sock is my savior, but does faith make either of those things real if they are not?
ReplyDeleteOur pastor preached about faith this Sunday, and I confess I didn't pay attention so much as write about my own problems with faith in my notebook. My faith is weak, so weak. Because I'm scared of being wrong? Because I'm too enlightened? Because I'm struggling over semantics? I'm not sure. I only know that it's a slippery slope to start questioning everything that has to be taken on faith. I'm going to have to figure out what things I do believe and how I can dedicate myself to strengthening my faith in the things that merit it. I just have to figure out for sure what those things are...
Think you can help me start making a list of the absolutes since you've helped add even more questions?
The Jason Gray song "More Like Falling in Love" has one little line in it that makes me think of this post. He says, "Give me words-- I'll misuse them." What a brilliant way to put the struggle with semantics and expression of who God is and how He works. We can come up with as many new ways to describe it as we want, and we'll always fall short. What is a life-giving revelation today will be a trite expression tomorrow. What was once God-inspired language becomes a misquote and misused weapon. What should have God-breathed power becomes weak as we water down and misplace and misunderstand. Don't trust me to use the right words.
ReplyDeleteHere's the wonderful part, though-- the imperfection of words doesn't matter because of Jesus. Whatever the beginning of the book of John means, I love it. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Gorgeous.
God, thank You for being the Word. Forgive us for our misuse, and help us to understand and communicate as You do, divine Word.