Recently, my daughter Josephine, who is in her last year of studying Chemical Engineering, had the opportunity to do some internship work at a lead smelter. Part of working at the smelter is to learn the risks of working with (and in) a facility that deals in dangerous chemicals. Thus, Josephine had to learn about the effects of lead on the body and how to mitigate against these risks by policies and procedures.
One of these obvious procedures is to cover up the entirety of her body so that no lead was absorbed into her skin. This meant that from head to toe, she wore a thick, orange jumpsuit and a full facemask which filtered the air that she breathed. This is a great idea to protect the workers at the smelter, but with the covering comes various drawbacks.
2. Communication is severely limited when you can't hear the person who is trying to speak to you.
As the summer went on, and Josephine was in and out of the body suit, she came up with a great idea as to how to communicate with others in spite of the covering.
Josephine had been learning Auslan (Australian Sign Language) in her spare time. If she could somehow, at the very least, spell the words she was trying to tell others, then they could communicate without trying to yell through the facemasks.
One day, as the heat was building outside (and inside her jumpsuit), she had to tell one of her co-workers something. Beginning to sign the letters, she watched with frustration as her co-worker shook her head.
It then hit Josephine: It's all right for me to learn the language, but if they can't interpret what you're saying, it's useless, like speaking Spanish in India. No matter how much you emphasize your words, no matter how loud you speak, you are just going to frustrate the person who wants to know.
It's not a stretch to understand the same thing about the Christian faith. As the language has become bulky, so many theological words (even the word 'theological' makes some people scratch their heads) are confusing and irrelevant. Yet, as the decades and centuries have continued, we've continued speaking words that make no sense to our contemporary world, words like 'repentance,' 'righteousness,' 'doing life with Jesus.'
And the world, covered by religious protective gear, shakes their collective heads, frustrated by the lunacy of repentance (when they don't think what they've done is wrong), the judgmentalism of righteousness (when they are, by nature, a good person) and doing-life-with-Jesus (when they are perfectly happy doing life on their own). Yet the Church keeps insisting that if you get our language right, or when you get our language right, then you will be ready to encounter God.
How does the world come to grips with a post-religious language? What is its syntax? How does a life-long Christian translate this? It would be like Elizabethan Christians speaking olde English attempting to understand (and communicate in) binary computer language (machine language). Unless they could find a middle ground and intersecting points, they'd just spend most of their time shaking their heads.
This isn't to say that the church sheds its theology, but certainly it can translate the beauty of the gospel into a language which some of the world, dressed in its religious protective gear, can understand. We can speak in terms of a different kind of abundant living, talking about the good works that one does as a reflection of a God who was thinking ahead, and living a faithful life with Jesus as the cornerstone of all that we do. And this can't simply be language, it must be action. If we proclaim the call to repentance, we must be active in establishing justice. If we proclaim a call to righteousness, we must be active in acknowledging our own moments of un-righteousness. If we proclaim our own walk with Jesus, we are fair-warned that we must start walking with people who are considered outcasts by the rest of the world (and by some of the Church world).
Is this not the new language needed? Can the world interpret this word and action better? Won't this draw people closer to each other and to God?
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