Khari’s Reviews > Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age > Status Update

Conceding the point that words shape our imaginations opens the door to what the postmodernists have been saying all along: that language is more important than behavior. That if only we say the right things, that we can change reality itself.

I refuse to concede that point. It's not true, and I don't know why she says it is, except that maybe she hasn't quite removed all post-structuralism from her worldview.

Words do effect our cognition, absolutely, but they do not shape it. If they did shape it, then we would be incapable of understanding anything unless a word existed for it. But we have all had the experience of a sensation, or a thought, or a flavor, or a thing that we understood but had no word for it, and then when we came across the word for it (or invented one) felt it slide into place like a perfect glove.

That is because words are arbitrary symbols that stand in for real concepts or real things. In English we say a pen is...well, a pen. But in Spanish it's esfero, because I have changed the configuration of sounds coming out of my mouth has the reality of what a pen is changed? No.

Because leftist ideology has said that racism must include the idea of power, does that mean the disenfranchised cannot be racist? No.

"Words matter. And we are living in a world that has become a war of words. Christians are called to be peacemakers, not passive dupes in this war. Words do more than communicate ideas; they shape our imaginations. Change the words, and you change the world."

Uhhhhh. No.

Words do matter. That is true. Words change in meaning. That is also true. But changing the words does not mean the world changes.

We must stand in our union with Christ and against the idea that sexual identity encompasses personhood. Personal identity is not in the eyes of the beholder. Our humanity is not in our feelings. Our sense of self is not in our sin. It is in Christ.