Words

Words mean something. Words mean something specific. They point to concrete ideas beyond themselves. Sometimes the words are misunderstood and the ideas are miscommunicated by the hearer/reader, but that does not nullify the original words pointing to the original concrete ideas.

"He kicked a ball" is fairly simple to understand. It is straight-forward. "He kicked a tire", while straight-forward, conveys more meaning - probably involving shopping for a car. "He kicked a dead horse" is not straight-forward at all. It means something about futile attempts to get something to move or work. Language that is not straight-forward is not trying to be misleading, it is simply using a language mechanism to convey an idea - a language mechanism that ought to be familiar to the readers. Story, analogy, idioms, figures of speech, and etc are meant to be understood properly. Sometimes that requires study. Often it requires humility.

Many times, the battle for the Bible is about language - what words mean or meant. So often, I see 2 kinds of errors that people take to the Bible, and I hang my head.

1. Some people want the Bible to be understood literally in all but the most obvious cases. It makes interpretation easy for the non-scholarly. It makes life more black and white - something that seems to strangely bring comfort to them.

2. Some people want the Bible to be understood however the reader wants to understand it. The reader can simply use the words on the page to convey the ideas the reader wants. These people think that words/language have no inherent meaning and that the only real meaning is the meaning that the reader brings to the words. (How then could words teach them something new - or challenge them to live differently?)

The battle over words and how they are to be understood has long intrigued me. Lewis Carol's musings have given me insight:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

While I agree technically with Mr. Dumpty, it is not helpful to say the word "Pancake" when one really means "iceberg". The source has to be trusted to put ideas into words that have generally understood and specific meanings. If the source is deceitful or otherwise untrustworthy, don't bother. But if the source is trustworthy, then we do the writer justice by working (hard) to understand the ideas conveyed through the words.

(image grabbed from todayscatholicworld.com)