What are we without words?

Nothing.

We cannot learn. We cannot think. We cannot speak. We cannot teach. We cannot dream. We cannot plan. We cannot build. We cannot buy. We cannot make.…

Without words, we cannot do anything.

And that makes words of the utmost importance above all things.

We are all too often told we keep an unnecessary preoccupation with words. That our accuracy in application and insistence on proper definition is wrongly placing a stumbling block before people trying to find salvation.

But without an understanding that words have importance, why would that even matter? What is salvation without words to explain it? What is the thing that we are being saved from without words to express it? Who is the one saving us? And how is he saving us? Without words, and without specific words selected for their meaning and importance, we cannot know that we need salvation, that we have a savior, we are saved, or what we are saved from. And we cannot know what we were saved for.

We are told we are too rigid when we refuse to accept the wrong words being used. We are called miopic for making correctness the crux. We are branded small minded and blind for behaving as if what we say and how we say it is everything and needs be attended to with the greatest of care.

While it is true that we take great pains to teach theology and etymology, that we are careful to instruct our students in the techniques of translation and to adhere always to hermeneutics, we are by no means overbearing about it. It would seem so because so many are lackadaisical in this life. They have been by and large led to believe these, crucial issues are matters of opinion, subject to tradition, and are all around unimportant

These people have been taught to regard the importance of words as last and least of all things instead of first and Paramount. They have been trained to treat words as semantics without studying to know whether they are or not. And to regard anyone who would care as if they were going too far.

But what are we without words?

Nothing.

And what are words without meaning?

Less than Nothing.

Words have meaning or are nothing, and words with inaccurate meanings are chaos and make chaos.

How many messy paths are their in the church and the messianic ways?

Most are made by the disagreement over the meanings of words, blind belief in the meanings we were given, and mistaken association and cultural misapplication.

Infact no one truly believes words are actually unimportant.

They simply want to believe their chosen words are appropriate. And no one ever tries to tell us of the insignificance of words until they hear us say that our scribes chose the wrong word, our translators adopted a foreign word and pretended it was a translation or that the meaning of a word is otherwise than explained.

And every time they have to use words to express how unimportant words are…

Really it comes down, as most things often do, to pride, fear and stubbornness.

We as humans don’t want to change. We don’t want to be discomforted. We don’t want to know that we were wrong all along.

So yes, words matter. And the meaning of those words matter. And few things can or do matter more than this.

And remember…you are welcome to disagree but you will be proving yourself wrong as you use words to make your point, select specific words because of their meaning, and arrange said words in such a manner as to best express your position of their unimportance.

Question Everything
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