Language is a tricky thing. Certain words have a specific effect on people. This can change as life experiences accumulate and new contexts are added to our growing wealth of data. The word "surf" once meant nothing more than very fragrant laundry detergent to me. Now I am the mother of a California 'surf' dude. (what? how did that happen..?!) I have been considering this concept lately and its application to the church; to the "body". We visited a church this weekend that had a huge congregation. My husband noted certain business terms he hadn't ever heard in context with the gospel. MBOs, Targets, 5 year plans. He liked it. He could understand why this language attracted some of his buddies. (He uses football terms that are meaningful to him (Lord, block for me -- this one's gonna be a touchdown...) (Football terms wouldn't have meant anything to me 15 years ago--now they all make sense...).

On the downside of this, certain words and phrases have been causing distress in me: "God told me.." "Advancing the Kingdom" "the biblical truth" "ministry" "cleaning the fish" "holiness" -- In my personal context these words trigger unpleasant memories and experiences in me. I understand that this is my baggage, but I also know that everyone is carrying some of their own. This makes real communication very difficult. We tread over each other's land mines. It's like the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9). We think we are making sense, but we aren't effectively communicating. We form the words without realizing the real effect they may have on the person with whom we speak. A personal relationship really makes a difference in communication. If you know me, you see an expression in my face that lets you know that you are dangerously close to a land mine. "Warning, Will Robinson, Warning".

With that said, I'm experiencing the miraculous lately. I've been wandering around the internet, reading your blogs. It amazes me how many of you are grappling with the same issues I am -- sometimes using the same analogies I use. I think this is a miraculous thing really. I am a firm believer in the inadaquacy of language -- you can not know what a word may invoke in me, nor I in you. Yet we only have words, really, to get our thoughts and feelings out. I wonder if you find it equally as remarkable that someone in Idaho or South Texas can be relatively on the same page as me, the New Yorker living in Southern California. I see God in that.

And as if to remind me of how unlikely it all really is, the local radio preachers today are still singing the same "you're all going to hell" song. (Today, I actually heard a radio pastor say that he wasn't really standing in judgement, he was simply inspecting the fruit -- a new variation on the 'take the board out of your own eye before you look at the speck in your brother's eye'--- for him it is a pineapple...for me it is a kumquat). I imagined him inspecting the fruit in the same manner as the Jewish men inspecting the palm frond in the LA Times Photo.

I know from experience that 6 witnesses to a single event in time will see 6 different things. It is the combination of their 6 points of view that make a more accurate picture of an event than just 1. This is a simple concept. We fight in court over our interpretations of the U.S. Constitution (even though at 200+ the document is fairly young given the scheme of things) even though we are of the same culture and generation. A bible verse may mean something different to me today than it meant to me 20 years ago. So why do I believe, and in fact EXPECT that we should absolutely agree in our interpretation of the bible? Of Jesus? Of the Kingdom of God? I have somehow bought into the idea of absolute truth. I think, "If something is absolutely true, shouldn't we agree on it?" God is the same yesterday, today and forever. ( And all that really means is that He has probably put up with this incessent whining from generations of believers since the beginning of time.) And just when I am at the brink of giving up my hope of a community of believers, I turn to the random blogs of virtual strangers who are all barking up the same tree. We are all looking at the truth from our own angle, our own point of view. When we listen to each other, we get more of the whole picture. I'm liking what I see.

Check out Real Live Preacher (at reallivepreacher.com) to see his angle on the Tower of Babel.