It’s funny how specific stories from your childhood stick with you through the years.

I often recall a conversation that happened as my mother was driving my younger brother and I home from school, slowly easing through afternoon traffic. I couldn’t have been older than 9 or so and my brother a couple of years younger. Ever inquisitive, my brother spotted some contraption along the way and needed to find out more;

“Mom, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That thing, mom, what is it?”

“Je ne sais pas”, my mother casually replied.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know”, she responded.

Bewildered and frustrated my brother protested, “Whyyy would you saaay that if you don’t know what it means!?!”

It took a lot of stifled laughter and careful wording to explain to him that she did in fact know what it meant, and it meant, that she didn’t know. It never helped him figure out what the contraption was but his protest of frustration has stuck with me over the years.

“Why would you say that if you don’t know what it means?”

I’ve always been intrigued by language. Words, their origin, their implications, their evolution. It’s all extremely interesting to me. Yes, I was the type of kid who kept a giant dictionary by my bedside and read it for fun. And the more I learn about language, the more interested I become.

Not only are words the tools we use to share our thoughts, ideas and feelings but, in very real ways, the words that we use shape our very thoughts.

For example, the Zuñi tribe of North America don’t have different words for green and yellow. As a result, Zuni speakers have a hard time telling those colors apart. Russians on the other hand have specific words for various shades of light blue and dark blue and, when tested, are better than English speakers at picking up on the difference between these colours.

In fact, the more we look into it, the more scientist are realizing that the way we speak and the words we use can affect everything from our ability to recognize colors to how well we gauge amounts, the degree to which we will blame and penalize people, whether we’ll save for our future, how quickly we might get lost and on and on it goes.

In many ways words serve as both the label for our ideas as well as the containers that make us capable of even having certain ideas.

Language can either open up entirely new worlds to us or close us off from understanding the world. If you’ve ever travelled to a country that speaks another language, you may have experienced the alienation that comes with losing meaningful language. In fact, all you may need to do is walk into an office or, a church.

Every sub-culture comes with its own tailored sub-language. Designers speak in terms of pixels and dpi, negative space and colour space while musicians refer to tones and scales, bpm and pitch. Lingo can be a powerful way for communities to communicate rich and meaningful ideas effectively. Unfortunately it can also become a communication barrier that causes people to lose meaning and with that meaning narrow our room for ideas.

Naturally, language is very fluid and dynamic. It adapts to cultures, grows with time and expands as we learn more. Each year the dictionary adds and removes words as their usefulness comes and goes. Language both shapes and reflects society.

Ask the average 12 year old how meaningful they find Shakespeare’s plays and your answer will likely be, not very. It’s not because his plays lack meaning, but because that meaning is trapped behind speech we don’t use in our day to day lives anymore.

Several years ago I began to recognize a sub-language, a lingo being used all around me that had become a barrier to meaning. I noticed that when most people speak about God and how we relate, the mysteries of existence, meaning in life, any of these “Spiritual” topics the lingo kicks in.

I noticed myself using the lingo. And my friends, and my family, and my pastors, and the books I read. We all used these terms and phrases that we would never use in our everyday life outside of a religious context. Over the years I began to compile a list. Any word or phrase that wasn’t in my common everyday vocabulary, or meant something completely different in regular conversation got jotted down.

And the list grew and grew:

Salvation
Sin
Saved
Church
Gospel
Grace
Holy
Ministry
Justified
Sanctified
Prayer
Evangelize
Witness
Lord
Saviour
Repent
Faith
Anointed
Testimony
Fellowship
Kingdom of God,
Kingdom of Heaven
Christian
Heaven
Hell
etc………….

The more I listened, the more the list grew. And don’t even get me started on the phrases that make the list.

Now, nothing at all is wrong with these words (although I take issue with most of the phrases). In fact, like any good lingo, these words are specialized in order to convey MORE meaning between those who really know what they mean. But the problem I found myself facing was that I was saying these words, and my friends were saying these words yet we realized far too often we had no idea what any of it meant.

And i felt my brothers protest echo in my ears louder and louder.

Why would you say it if you don’t know what it means?

Perhaps this isn’t a problem for everyone. But understand, I was raised by Christian parents, I went to a Christian school, I went to church weekly if not more often. These words have always surrounded me. I’ve been told that when I was 4 years old I raised my hand in bible class and “accepted Jesus into my heart to save me from my sins” . Now, let’s be honest for a moment. What does that even mean to a four year old? What is your heart? A vital organ or a valentine? Can I accept Jesus into my lunchbox too? And speaking of Jesus, if he can fit into my little heart in my chest is he a miniature invisible man? Like a fairy? Or is he real? And what is he saving me from? Monsters? My sins? What is sin? Is it like monsters? Is that real too?

What exactly are we saying when we use these phrases and words?

They say you don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to a child. Obviously this is a simplification because I’m pretty sure no neuroscientist or molecular biologist is going to quite get my 6 year old friends to understand what they do exactly (or me for that matter), but we generally get the point. Explaining things to children opens our eyes to how well we understand things ourselves. And yet we use these words and phrases with children, and among ourselves often, relying on the words to convey meanings we aren’t really quite certain of ourselves.

And so I began an experiment. I started to ban these words from my speech. Instead of falling back on this lingo I was forced to think about what I meant. Now I try to use words closer to my reality.

Kingdoms for example, are where disney princesses live, or people far far in the past that seem make believe. Governments and economies are real to me now. Present and tangible affecting my daily living. Now when I think in terms of the Government and Economy of God, my world expands. It brings an idea into a reality. The words I used started to shift the way I think. I traded in phrases that made as much sense as Shakespeare and started thinking in terms that had more innate meaning to me. And like a Russian with all their words for blue I started recognizing more colour.

What would happen if you stopped using the word sin for a month, or a year? How would you describe it, how would you refer to it. Would your idea of what it is narrow or broaden? Would it feel more real or less? What if you stopped using the word Gospel? How would you say it in regular language? Would you start to relate to it more when it’s not cloaked in a word that has little meaning in any other context? What is holiness? What do you mean when you say you are saved and they are not? What are you being saved from today? Does a saviour feel the same as a hero, as someone who rescues, a healer? Does church convey the same connotations as family and community? Does prayer sound like connecting with the really real?

Now, because these words are useful sometimes, I re-adopt them in certain contexts but I have a fresh grasp on what I mean when I say them. And for many of the words, their meaning is still unfolding for me. By forcing myself to speak without the lingo, I’m constantly challenged to think about what I really believe and what I really want to say. This involves a lot of questions and examination, both personal and historical. What’s the origin of this word, what was the original idea, what did the greek word mean? What do I honestly believe about this? What word best reflects that idea for me now? I challenged myself to stop using the lingo and start using natural words. And it transformed my thinking.

Are the words you use opening up the world to you or closing you off from understanding?

Are there specks of diamonds or blocks of coal hidden behind these words?

For those that identify as Christian, do these words give you more meaning or do they disguise meaning for you?

For those that don’t identify as Christian, agnostic about God or bewildered by religion, have you thrown away these words because they seemed to lack meaning? Could there be meaning that was missed behind the lingo? Have you found different ways to express the mystery?

It’s all very interesting language. But that could just be me and my bedside dictionary…

What words would go on your contraband list?

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