April 2005

How is your God-talk?

I was most unexpectedly arrested by a Uniting Church minister during my first Vision Development Workshop.

My crime: using church jargon!

My punishment: a good behaviour bond never to do it again!

My chances of avoiding a repeat offence: highly unlikely, because we are all guilty and regularly.

As church people, we constantly use church jargon. Just tick the following checklist for each offence … and be honest please.

Have you prayed using any of the following words: saviour, saved, redeemer, repentance, the Kingdom or any other ecclesiastical in-house words or expressions?

Have you had visitors to worship and not checked whether they were churchgoers who would understand "God-talk"?

Have you used similar language in a conversation with a non-church member?

When did you check whether your God-talk, which most of us use unconsciously, is understood by everyone you talk to?

I will not send you to jail but I need to challenge you, as I do myself, not to be a repeat-offender. I assure you it is far from an easy task.

Similarly, we need to become bilingual, so that we know when it is correct to use God-talk. Maybe even multilingual, so that we can God-talk to different migrant groups … multigenerationally.

God-talk can be appropriate for in-church occasions with regular and understanding members. However, if we can achieve a universal language which serves as both a Christian language as well as being contemporary, we will find faith-sharing so much easier and less threatening to us and those we meet outside the church community.

Many of us do comparable bilingualism as we move from one secular situation to another. Examples are our workplaces and home, one sport to another, one generation to another. It can be done.

Don Watson, in his excellent book Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (Random House Australia), offers many embarrassing hints. Some are seen in non-church situations but they are so relevant to us.

Watson says, "When we hear this sort of language it is, therefore, commonsense to assume there is a cult, or something like a cult … They speak in code …
"The public language will only lift in tone and clarity when those who write and speak it take words seriously again."

Jargon that offends Watson "represents an example of what George Orwell described as anaesthetic writing. You cannot read it without losing some degree of consciousness."

He says, "Ideologues speak in a language best understood by ideologues of like mind: it is called preaching to the converted and is probably a species of narcissism, like a budgerigar talking to itself in a mirror."

Watson also emphasises the power of ordinary language, free from the buzz words, jargon and language of ideologues. For the general community best understands the language they use.

If we are to share our faith, we cannot afford to be like Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady who failed to convert Eliza Doolittle to his "unordinary" language. If we are to connect meaningfully with the community, we have to:

• learn to be ecclesiastically bilingual;
• adopt visitor-friendly language and styles of communication in worship; and
• understand differences in generational language and imagery.

We have so much to share. Let us not fail by continued use of in-house God-talk in the community.