Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing-and How We Can Revive Them

by Jonathan Merritt

For centuries theologians have debated what this “image” consists of. Some say it’s intellect, others claim it is the ability to reason, and others still contend that it is the ability to obey a moral code. Another possibility is that the imago dei is our ability to speak. After all, God’s first command to humans is to formulate a vocabulary by assigning names to animals and objects.

Alfred Wallace, a friend of Darwin’s who may have been the first to actually articulate evolutionary theory, noted that the brain’s ability to reason and speak was so advanced beyond the needs of human survival that natural selection was inadequate to account for it. While evolutionary progression may explain earth’s many species, Wallace concluded that the emergence of complex speech required intervention from a supernatural power or superior intelligence.

Linguists note that as a community grows more diffuse and gathers less frequently, the risk of losing its common language increases. People in a community speak their language more frequently and with greater sophistication when they spend time together.

When we speak God, we are not just voicing letters strung together in a certain order. We are handling containers of spiritual knowledge. Countless generations have picked up these words and wrestled with their meanings. Their experiences force us to re-ask old questions and brainstorm new ones as we seek to understand the world we live in and the world we cannot see.

Bell illustrates the second way speakers can respond to an ailing language: substitution. This approach identifies problematic or triggering words and purges them from the sacred lexicon.

While it may be necessary to avoid certain words in exceptional situations, substitution is ultimately unsustainable.

When the words of faith fall into disrepair, many respond by refusing to speak them and hunting for more capable language. Many of our most cherished terms appear to some as four-letter words.

Transformation is a riskier road and a more difficult path to be sure. But if fossilization turns off younger generations of God-speakers, and if substitution neglects the inspired text and backbone of the Christian faith, transformation might mark the way forward.

“For ancient Jewish interpreters, the biblical text—every word, verse, and story—was meant to be played with. They attempted to mine every imaginable meaning,” he said. “By applying different meanings, they would mine different principles. Any notion that the language of the Bible would have one meaning, in Judaism, doesn’t make sense.”

In order to revive the vocabulary of faith, God-speakers need to have open mouths and open minds. They must be willing to use the language and also willing to allow the language to change.

But engaging our imaginations is the only way we can learn the discipline of playing with words and speak God from scratch. For when we engage our imaginations, we open wide waves of meaning and begin to revive that which is struggling to survive.

“Too much debate about scriptural authority [has taken] the form of people hitting one another with locked suitcases. It is time to unpack our shorthand doctrines, to lay them out and inspect them,” Wright says. “Long years in a suitcase may have made some of the contents go moldy. They will benefit from fresh air, and perhaps a hot iron.”

Conservative God-speakers often remain in the first stage. They don’t want to get lost because they believe they are already home. They don’t want to unpack their luggage because they like the order, the tidiness. They may become overprotective of sacred terms and allow them to fossilize.

Progressive God-speakers often get stuck in the second stage.27 They have deconstructed everything until they become lost among the pieces. Their postmodern minds question everything and trust nothing. They see spirituality—and its vocabulary—as infinitely gray and unclear. They pitch sacred words, substituting them with other terms they hope will serve them better. But often, the disorder becomes a black hole of uncertainty.

That’s where creeds help. They ground us in our true identities as children of God who can lovingly disagree on most matters. By learning to speak the creeds again, we end the brutal heresy hunt that now runs rampant without restraint or criteria.

If spiritual practices provide a general strengthener for the brain, he notes, the effects could spill over into many other areas of life. A person who engages in spiritual practices might be better able to find his way home if he gets lost or work better at his job.

In a world where so many are writhing under the weight of chronic pain, Americans—and especially Jesus followers—must find a way to speak about pain that is helpful, informed, and compassionate.

Jesus is a king but not the kind they wanted. He will serve rather than be served. He will die and not be killed. He enters unarmed, waging peace. This makes a larger point, that God does not intend to meet our expectations. Instead, God intends to meet our needs.

Disillusionment is, well, the loss of an illusion. It is what happens when you take a lie—about the world, about yourself, about those you love, about God—and replace it with the truth. Disillusionment occurs when God shatters our fantasies, tears down our idols, dismantles our cardboard cutouts. It is the result of discovering that God does not conform to our expectations but rather exists as a mystery beyond those expectations.

My pain disorder has persisted despite my best efforts, but so has my relationship with God. I refuse to let my disappointment sever divine ties. And you know what? Over time, I’ve begun to uncover and shed illusions. I’m dismantling mirages I’ve constructed around productivity and identity and self-worth.

A sweeping survey by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion sorted people’s perceptions of God into four categories: Authoritarian God—High level of anger and high level of engagement Critical God—High level of anger and low level of engagement Distant God—Low level of anger and low level of engagement Benevolent God—Low level of anger and high level of engagement According to the study, the way people perceived God was a more reliable predictor of their values and behavior than any other measurement.

What if I unfurled my fingers and let go of those questions for a moment? What if I began to replace questions about the historicity of the story and instead welcomed questions about the truth of the story? “Whether or not you agree that the Fall happened,” he said, “we can all agree that the fall happens.”

More importantly, the audience matters. Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly, “Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them.”

Jesus seems to speak of being lost in a different way than do many who follow his teachings. Lost-ness is the state of being separated from the community and in need of reconciliation, but Jesus does not equate it here with evil or sinfulness. Instead, Jesus gives a sweeping picture of lost-ness that encompasses all who wonder and wander.

Maybe we are the shepherd and the woman. How often do we take inventory of our communities, and upon identifying those who are now “lost” and disconnected from us, take ownership for the role we may have played in their estrangement?

While we often use the term lost to refer to someone who needs to get her act together and start following the rules, in these stories, Jesus uses lost to mean loved, valuable, and worth pursuing. People who are “lost” are precious, not pitiful.