The crazy thing is, they still call it English. The confusion that causes is beyond describing, in Christian ministry, in education, at work, at home, everywhere. I’m pretty sure confusion is part of progressives’ purpose. We speak the same words but for many, those words have taken on alien, pagan meanings. Is it time we gave up the notion that we speak a common language, and starting bearing more of the burden of translation?

Man, Woman, Human

Need I give examples? “Man” and “woman” are the obvious ones. I think the problem there goes even deeper: If we could all agree on what “human” meant, we’d have an easier time with “male adult human” and “female adult human.” But when we have serious researchers calling for human rights for a lake, we don’t know what “human” means any longer. When people around the globe demand civil rights for trees and rivers and mountains and elephants, we aren’t elevating trees and bodies and waters and large mammals; we’re defining humanness out of existence.

Tolerance, Truth, Right, Wrong, Safe, Wise

It’s impossible to pinpoint where this started. Two early words to tumble were “tolerance” and “truth.” One used to mean treating others with respect when we disagreed with them. Then it became intolerant to disagree. Later it became “hateful.”

What happened to a  word such as “wise”? Can we even use it anymore? It’s okay to be “expert” if you have the approved degrees for it, and “lived experience” means a lot as well – though nothing like it used to mean – but those are paths to knowledge and authority. I don’t know anyone who’d call them paths to wisdom. Some words change meanings, some drop out of use altogether.

But this is all common knowledge, right? Wrong. (Oops. “Wrong”? There’s another word that doesn’t mean what it once did.)

The Fiction That We Still Speak the Same Language

Tolerance and hate still mean what they always did, for some of us. If I had the power, I’d restore its proper meanings for everyone. I can’t do that, and neither can you. Not in the short run, anyway. Not in the conversation you’re having at dinner or in the break room this afternoon.

So the not-so-commonplace conclusion we must arrive at is this: That we may speak using the same words using a language we both call English, but “English” itself is another re-defined word. It, too, doesn’t mean what it used to mean. We use one name for it as if it were the same language, but it’s split in two.

So many words have changed, it has become a fiction to think we speak the same language, not for anything but the simplest matters, or sometimes the most technical. Where it’s changed is in human matters.

Teaching English as the Formerly-Same-Language

“We don’t speak the same language here.” I could also be saying that about other language barriers. In any large American city there are dozens upon dozens of different first languages spoken by students at school. My church here in Dayton, recognizing that fact, teaches ESL, “English as a second language” classes.

I’m thinking, though, we may need to start teaching “English as the formerly-same language” classes along with it. This wouldn’t be for us, for conservatives, people who think in historic English terms, so we can learn to translate our English into this other English, today’s English.

In these classes we might teach that in their other-English, the word “love” doesn’t mean “treating others with their best interests at heart,” the way it does in our English. For them it’s more like “staying out of their way as they live the life they want to live.” (How love ever got equated with staying out of each others’ way, I cannot fathom, but that’s how it is.)

We would teach the how to translate old, useful, meaningful worlds like “safety,” “truth,” “wisdom,” “male” and “female” (of course), and the long-neglected “wisdom” into words our contemporaries could grasp. Above all we would show how to translate the name “Jesus” into terms they wouldn’t confuse with SJW/socialist/tolerant/fabulistic/whatever “Jesus.”

Translation Complications

Do not take this as a light task. It’s not just about words. Translating human concepts is a challenge in the best circumstances, but this has traps unlike most. I have spoken before audiences with a translator. It takes a lot longer. You can’t get as many thoughts across in a given amount of time. If I’d known the language, I could have sped it up to normal pace. Instead I had to be patient with the language barriers.

Patience is easy to come by when you know you’re the one speaking the foreign language there. It’s harder when you think you’re the native speaker, when you can’t help wondering why they won’t speak English, too, since they’re so good at pretending that’s the language they’re using, and when you know the reason for it is because someone has seriously messed it up. That’s when patience easily gives way to annoyance.

If that’s not complicated enough, this language problem works two ways. We can easily forget that our words need translating. They can forget it, too. It sounds enough like their English, they’re clueless about the need to translate. You speak a language that sounds like their English, so they interpret it in their English. If you don’t explain it, they won’t realize you’re not speaking the same language after all.

What We Can’t Give Up in the Process

Then to make matters even worse, they actually want these words to mean what they claim they mean. We can’t afford to give up that ground: It would be wrong. So for example, while we may have to use all kinds of other words to explain what we mean by “truth,” we can’t let them think we’re giving them their version of what “truth” means, and simply explaining our version of what it means.

No, we’re explaining what truth means, period. We have to hold that ground, not only for truth, but for all these crucial ideas – because that’s what they are. They aren’t just words, but ideas, ways of thinking, ways of recognizing and understanding reality, which means right and wrong matter here, too.

Still, we do have to take time to explain all this: What we’re saying, why we say it, why it makes sense, why it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s a slow process, overcoming these barriers and confusions. That’s when patience easily gives way to annoyance.

Our True Responsibility in Love

But that is also when we must ask if we want to complain, or if we want to communicate. We have a message to tell. It’s not their responsibility to know how to hear it the way we want to tell it. It’s our responsibility to tell it so they can hear it.

I’ve written on how to think about this with “truth” and “tolerance.” Those articles were more about understanding than about translating, so I plan to write more on actually translating language as time goes on.

They still might not like what we say. It will be at least as slow, but if we speak the truth wisely with love, shunning hatred, treating them with human respect, and doing all that in the right language, we stand a chance of getting through to them.

 

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream and the author or editor of six books, including the highly acclaimed Too Good To Be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality.xistence. The word doesn’t mean what it used to mean.