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Speaking a New Language

Speaking a New Language

Last updated on: June 30, 2016 at 5:37 pm by John O'Keefe

Speaking a New Language 2016-06-30T17:37:14-05:00 John O'Keefe

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[c] john c. o'keefe - use as your desire

[c] john c. o’keefe – use as your desire

When you speak about the Divine, what words do you use? We must learn the language of love, if we don’t speak the language of love we’re not truly following the teachings of Christ. Jesus tells us, when we’re a believer we will speak a new language. I believe the language we need to learn is the language is love. The problem with learning to speak the language of love is that Theological Language doesn’t center on love – it centers on concepts; love is more than a concept. This centering on concepts allow Religious Leaders to speak in a horrid way about others.

When I was in Seminary, one of my Professors said, ‘Theology became a science [a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject] when it developed its own words.’ Maintaining this theological language moved conversations about the Divine from a common language, into a dry, dead, boring language of professionals. At best, any theological language is weak, maybe even useless. Think of all the theological terms you know…

One of the things I grasped quickly in my walk is that Jesus never spoke, or used, terms like eschatology, apologetics, hermeneutics, credobaptism, eisegesis, regeneration, illumination, or liturgy [and to be honest, the list is never ending]. Jesus spoke in terms people, regular people, could grasp – he spoke of fields, smells, touch, taste, embrace, and nature. It’s silly to have a language of a professional class define how we speak of the Divine.

For me, theological language is meaningless [there, I said it] when it speaks of concepts that only a few can truly grasp. The biggest problem is, theological language is based on concepts [an abstract idea; a general notion], and those concepts don’t speak to people dealing with the messy mud of life. We need to shift from conception to perceptions [the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses]. Our words about the Divine need to have meaning in daily life – while the Divine has a great deal of meaning in our daily lives

Theological terms don’t describe things we become aware of through our senses, they miss words like muddy, messy, hard, smile, laugh, light, dance, cry, scent, play, open, or rhythm; we should be speaking of the Divine in a way people can grasp. Many think speaking in terms of our senses isn’t important, and is best left to the poets – and why can’t we speak of the Divine in poetic way? Read the Psalms. When we use current the theological language it sounds like we speak in terms of deserts – dry, dusty, sun scorched words that fly over the head of most people. Let us speak in terms of mountains, meadows, beaches, sight, sound, breath, smells, voices, touch, movement, feelings. The way we speak about the Divine should reflect the way we feel, how we sense the Divine in the world around us.

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