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

by Jonathan Merritt

I have friends who say that the most “loving” thing they can do is tell their “lost” friends that they are going to hell. The use of their words defines a meaning I cannot accept. Love is drained of compassion and forged into a machete, and Lost no longer describes the inability of all humans to find our way forward on our own. Their words separate a lesser them from a better us.

But we humans don’t always wield our words well. We often speak without much thought. We spew hate speech and blaspheme, transforming the sacred act of speaking into profane behavior. We speak deceptively and unkindly. We use words to curse, tear down, discourage, blame, and judge. A simple no can fly from our lips with the decimating power of a shotgun shell, while a sincere yes can alter the course of a life.

Carl Jung once said, if you kill your pain before you answer its questions, you kill yourself along with it. If I could take a magic pill and rid myself of the burning nerves and aching muscles and elevated anxiety once-and-for-all, I would. If possible, I bet you’d end whatever pain you might be experiencing—a health condition, an emotional devastation, or any great misfortune. I do not believe God wants suffering for us. But as long as the pain is here, we might as well answer the questions it is raising. And in so doing, we come to know God, others, and ourselves more intimately.

I began to understand, as Thomas Aquinas once noted, that the highest knowledge of God is to know that we do not know God. In this framework, embracing the mystery of God is the high-water mark of faith.

A mystery is not something that is unknowable; it is something that is infinitely knowable.”