Words, Words, Words

I feel like I have a bit of a “word hang-over” this morning. Monday evening I had a long, rich visit with a friend where we sat and talked theology over coffee for about four hours. Tuesday, after talking as an English teacher all day, I meet with some friends and we talked deeply about God, life and ministry for about two hours. Wednesday night I had a long phone conversation with a candidating committee; Thursday I gave an hour-long, 1000 wpm lecture at Briercrest. And before I fell asleep last night (a little hair of the dog that bit me), my wife shared in Technicolor-detail the plot of a 400 page novel she just finished reading. Words, words, words. If words were wine, I’d feel like I really tied one on this week.

And I don’t use the wine metaphor flippantly; I think I’ve got pretty good biblical precedence. Paul tells the Ephesian church: “don’t get wasted on wine—instead, get ‘drunk’ by being filled with the Holy Spirit.” Then he goes on to say: “Speak to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” The NIV translates this “speaking” as a second command, but Paul himself actually connects it much more closely to “being filled with the Holy Spirit.” This spiritual (even musical) speech is the natural result of our being filled with the Holy Spirit, not just another imperative. Our “intoxication” with the Spirit in our midst, Paul says, will manifest itself in rich, edifying, gracious words. (With this in mind, go back and read his instructions leading up to this verse, and you’ll count no less than 8 different descriptions of how we must speak: speak truthfully, use words to build each other up, get rid of all unwholesome talk, slander, coarse joking, obscenity, foolish talk, empty words.)

So I think it’s only natural that I’m feeling a little hung over on words today.

Because here’s the thing: our sacred writings insist that the Divine Word became flesh and “pitched his tent among us”, that faith comes “out of hearing,” that with our mouths we “confess into salvation,” that our talk should be “seasoned with salt.” Rich Christian communities-- Spirit-filled Christian communities-- must be places where talk is anything but cheap.

I read a fascinating book by Murray Jardine a while back called The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. Jardine traces the history of Western liberal capitalist democracy, and concludes that our current obsession with aesthetic self-expression through consumerism represents the great moral and existential crisis of our time. Looking for answers to this crisis, he points out that in the Christian faith, God creates the world by speaking, and then creates humans in his image to join him in this creative work. "Just as God creates a world by speaking," he writes, "humans can, in a very real sense, create worlds by speaking."

Jardine argues that in its affirmation of the creative power of human speech, the Faith offers real answers to the modern crisis of aesthetic consumerism. He holds that the word-oriented communities envisioned in the Scriptures-- communities where humans discover the power of our words to heal, transform and enrich our hearts-- is the vital alternative we need to the fragmentation and isolation of our time.

Of course, Solomon said it before him: "the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life."

Still nursing my happy hang-over today, I think he's right.