The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 63 - Aligning Words with Biblical Truth
What if your words had the power to shape not only your reality but also your relationship with the divine?
In today's episode, we unpack the profound ways in which language influences our prayers and communication with God. We argue that eloquence isn't a prerequisite for being heard by the divine; even the simplest, most honest utterances reach His ears. Through a series of compelling examples and scriptural references, we underscore that sincerity and need are the true currencies in our spiritual exchanges.
Additionally, we touch upon the myriad ways God communicates with us, showcasing His unparalleled mastery over all forms of language.
We then shift gears to discuss the transformative power of words in shaping our understanding of the world and ourselves.
Words can build bridges, but they can also create strongholds of deceit and confusion.
By aligning our speech with biblical truths, we can dismantle these harmful narratives and take control of our thoughts.
Key scriptures like 2 Peter 2:18-19 and 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 illustrate the potency of God's word in this process.
We also reflect on the importance of silence, prudence, and truth in our speech, citing Proverbs and the teachings of Jesus. To wrap up, we hint at the intriguing theme of language diversity and unity, a topic we hope to explore in future episodes. Join us as we navigate these deep waters and encourage you to share this enlightening journey with others.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, as we come towards the end of our series about language, and I want to talk about styles of language, genres, context implications, irony, things like that. Now, language can be very, very simple, but it can also be very complex and subtle. But even that can require clarification, because if you are a native speaker of a language, it can seem very simple, but that same language to an outsider who's relatively recently learned the language, everything can seem incredibly confusing, misleading, complicated, and the kind of idioms seem impenetrable. So, yeah, language simple but also very complex, and the same piece of language can be both simple to one person, very complex to another. And I think we want to begin, though, with the fact that the living God doesn't require any special kinds of language to hear us or understand us or communicate with us. This is a hugely important point, because many people assume that talking to God or hearing from God must require special kinds of speech or vocabulary or even particular human languages, but that isn't true, and the Bible makes this very, very clear. We don't have to learn Hebrew or Arabic or any language to speak to the living God. We don't need to learn poetry, and we don't have to speak like a 17th century Puritan, even though some of us quite enjoy the language of the King James Version of the Bible and all that kind of body of literature that came out of that or inspired by that way. Um, in fact, the bible says when we speak with the simple honesty of a child, we speak best in prayer. Again, even that concept of simple honesty, though, when I've said that, um, that is um you know, you need, because, like, even the simple honesty of a child might be impenetrable to or strange to an outsider, because a child can speak with great subtlety and forms that are hard to grasp. But so I'm saying the simple honesty of a child within a language structure, and that a child can just speak with a kind of like, yeah, a genuine simplicity with the language that the child has got, and that's important. The idea here is that we can speak without learning anything special. Put it this way whatever language we have, whatever language we have, it will be heard. If we are addressing the Father in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, whatever language we have will be heard. Even our simplest words and prayers can be heard by the Father.
Speaker 1:Job 38, 41 says who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? You see that many of us worry, that we're not good with words, that we don't know how to talk to each other, let alone talk to God. But you see, when the Lord Jesus came to make sense of the world for Job, back in Job 38. That is the pre-incarnate Jesus talking to Job, and when he comes to make sense of things, he asks this question who is it who can hear the raven when it's young cry out to God? So the raven is not a very beautiful bird and sometimes people even treat it as a sign of bad luck.
Speaker 1:Some birds have glorious songs, but the raven doesn't. It has a kind of annoying croak, yet the mere needy croak of the raven is heard by the living God. The raven is heard by the living God. Animals, then, have language, or they make sounds and can even get used to certain signs or gestures that we use, but they don't speak language like humans do, and analysis of that seems to indicate that Animals communicate with each other through dance, songs, cries, calls, but they don't sit around discussing politics or telling stories or just chatting about life, or they don't appear to do in the analysis we have. However, even the simplest cries and croaks of the animals are heard by our Heavenly Father, and that's so important because, well, look, no matter how much we struggle with expressing our feelings or ideas, even the most basic cries and grunts and groans to the Father in the name of Jesus, they can be heard.
Speaker 1:So we can forget about trying to make super spiritual prayers, whatever that may mean to us, what we think that involves. I mean, I can remember listening to some people pray and at the beginning of their prayer they have very elaborate introductions, very elaborate introductions, and, let me be honest, I kind of enjoy them, but I don't think they're necessary. So I can remember a person praying and the prayer begins with this sense of almighty, august, infinite. God. We approach you or thee with fear and trembling, aware of the infinite distance that stands between us, and yet this sense of a mercy seat upon which we may find an audience, and so on. You know, that kind of thing. I kind of enjoy it, that kind of thing, but it is actually unnecessary.
Speaker 1:We might like to say those things at the beginning of a prayer in order to frame our own minds and our own position. We may do that for our own benefit, but it isn't necessary in terms of communicating with the living God. If the raven's cry for simple food is heard, so will our cries of need, and Jesus reminds us that of that same truth in Luke, chapter 12 and verse 24, when he says consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them, and how much more valuable you are than birds. Now, so that's important.
Speaker 1:There is a basic level that we require no special language, no special styles, no special forms, and God can speak to us with great simplicity also. But it is important to recognize that the Lord God speaks to us in a wide variety of forms and styles. So it isn't that he only speaks in incredibly simple speech or only in incredibly complicated speech. What we discover is a huge variety. We should understand how the power of language works in all its complexity and variety. The living God has absolute mastery of all language, and not just every human language that exists, but All the different genres, nuances and subtleties of every language and dialect, in his total sovereign control over all creation and history. Even the tiniest details of language are accessible to him and he can communicate to us in any and every language, dialect and genre. And that's important to realize, because a person might feel that God has spoken to them, and rightly so. You know the Spirit has inspired a communication. But to us we might say, oh, but that's just silly, that doesn't make any sense. I don't get that, as if we are the arbiters of what counts as good communication or something, but someone else might find our ways of communicating silly or pompous or overly circumlocutory.
Speaker 1:Look the Bible. Let's take the Bible. The Bible has a variety of styles and genres of literature. There's history, songs, letters, prophecy, sermons, gospels, biography, wisdom, philosophy, the symbolic apocalypse of poems, and all these forms of language have their own sort of rules and forms to convey the meaning intended, and we take note of the context when we read them.
Speaker 1:Words derive their meaning and power from the context and connections as well as their own individual meaning. So you can't just isolate a word. This is a mistake many, many people make, particularly in Bible study. They'll say, ah, I'm going to examine this word and look what this word means, and they'll like, analyze this, like individualized word, and yet that's not going to give you the meaning. What is the context? What's the sentence, the paragraph, the section, the book as a whole? What's going on here? And what is the meaning of the Bible as a whole? What is the? That's why we always say learn the Nicene Creed if you want to understand the Bible, because the creed is a distillation of the meaning of the Bible, and then you know. Start. But anyway, the point being is that we can't know what any individual word means when it's isolated from a setting, a specific usage, a particular context.
Speaker 1:We sometimes have quoted Verne, poitras, and he suggests that we can look at the meaning of language in the same way. We can look at the structure and meaning of the physical world in terms of particles, waves and fields. I like this. He gives this, it's a great analogy. He says if we look at words as particles, we focus on their own individual meaning. What makes this one word different to others? What is its typical range of meaning? And then, if we look at words in terms of the field of meaning, we look at its relationship to other words in the language, what role it plays in the sentence as it relates to other words. And then, if we look at words in terms of a wave of meaning. Then we see the direction and purpose of the words, how they fit into the wider purposes of life and reality. What are words used for? Whose history are they part of? I love that. Particles, waves and fields, waves and fields and how. That same method of understanding the physical world, and we're going to look at that approach to the physical world in a lot more detail in future episodes, but that's helpful to bring that sort of perception to language. So the variety of style in God's own world demonstrate God's own word, demonstrates that God sees language in this rich and complex way.
Speaker 1:Truth is not just a matter of abstract, propositional statements, but truth takes the form of parables, poems, history, myth and song. Truth is no less true if it is a poem or a song, a letter or a history, and God's word encourages us and stimulates us to produce a great range of literature. And that's important, like when we engage with the Bible. Yes, it's teaching us the truth, but it's also teaching us many other things. It's teaching us how to use language, how to tell stories, how to understand things Okay, but words, the danger of words.
Speaker 1:I want to wrap this up, if we can, in this episode so we can move on to our next topic. But the danger I want perhaps to end with this concept of the danger of our words there's. What we've seen is how powerful language is. It's very powerful and it's something that you know. It's a divine power that's existed in the eternal Trinity for endless ages and that gift has been given to us in creation and it's such a powerful thing. And the Bible is constantly warning us about our use of words, language.
Speaker 1:If words weave the world together so that we connect and understand we've seen that, haven't we throughout these episodes Words literally make sense of the world to us. There is no world without words. There's just a meaninglessness without words. So if words weave the world together so that we connect and understand that, it's vital that our words are taught by the word. If our words are little mediators or bridges to connect creation together, then they must always be conformed to the word, the mediator. The problem is that in our sinful mess, we tell ourselves words that corrupt and confuse our understanding. Our understanding of ourselves becomes corrupted and confused in our sinful mess becomes corrupted and confused, in our sinful mess, our understanding of other people and the whole world. We create connections that are not truthful, good, genuine, authentic reality building. Instead, we create connections that are harmful and deceitful and divisive.
Speaker 1:Our brains learn patterns of thinking and feeling as we tell ourselves sinful stories over and over again. I really want to repeat that the stories we listen to, watch, read, are teaching us and we get emotional response from these stories that we read, watch, listen to tell and so on, obsess about, imagine scenarios. We imagine all these things. The emotional responses we get from that are binding those stories, those words to us in us and they change the way we see and understand and feel and feel. Our brains learn patterns of thinking and patterns of feeling as we tell ourselves sinful stories over and over again. If we tell ourselves that a certain sinful action is good for us, feels good, liberating, comforting all, will make us better, then we will come to deeply believe that and we will even experience that, even as our life is destroyed. With our imagination, we create a picture of the world that we carry in our hearts and minds. Therefore, the words that we use to weave our inner world are incredibly powerful. As we listen to ideas and stories, those words create desires and dreams within us If we feed ourselves words and ideas that provoke our selfish desires, so we give more and more power to those desires. The messages that we constantly teach ourselves control all that we feel and do. As the Bible says, if we think like a non-Christian and speak like a non-Christian and listen to non-Christian stories, messages, ideas, stories, messages, ideas then we will feel, desire and behave and understand like a non-Christian.
Speaker 1:The devil is constantly trying to do what he did with Eve. He always wants to tell us words that undermine the word of God. He wants us to accept a description of the world and a description of ourselves that makes us into slaves of sin. Listen to this 2 Peter 2, 18-19. Listen to this 2 Peter 2, 18-19. Peter says False teachers mouth empty boastful words and by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error, who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom while they themselves are slaves of depravity, for people are slaves to whatever has mastered them. Those are incredibly powerful words from Peter there. 2 Peter 2, 18-19. Powerful words from Peter there 2 Peter 2.18-19.
Speaker 1:So, even as a person is beginning to escape from sin and deceitful desires, they can listen again to the false teachers who appeal to their desires and they're dragged back into the slavery Just by words. Our imagination shapes our desires and ambitions. What we dream about is sex, comfort, power or popularity. Then those are the things that control the way we live. It's really important to just sit down and meditate on what it is that controls the way we live Money, sex, comfort, power, popularity. What is it? Technology, what is it that controls us? Because then we are slaves to that. That's what Peter's telling us Every day.
Speaker 1:We need to replace the deceptive words from the world, the flesh and the devil, with the living words of the living God. Listen again to 2 Corinthians 10, verses 4 to 5. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ, every thought obedient to Christ. There can't be any areas of our lives, any thoughts, any imaginations that are not obedient to Christ. These strongholds are within us, are capturing us. See all the arguments and ideas of the world, the flesh and the devil are creating prison strongholds to hold us captive as slaves, hold us captive as slaves Every day. We must demolish these prison strongholds with the word of God. Always remember Psalm 1, the lifestyle of Jesus described in Psalm 1. We must not be controlled by our wandering thoughts, our leisure activities, what we're listening to, what we're watching, the words and stories that we're taking in. We must not be controlled by those. We must take control of our thoughts by the power of God in his word. Every time our thoughts defy the word of God, we need to take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.
Speaker 1:Here's a couple more scriptures. As we draw this, draw this to a close. Proverbs 10, verse 19 sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent holds their tongues. That's deep, isn't it? Sin is not ended by talking about it. It's better to just shut up and be wise, think, be so careful in what we say, like gushing out words. That doesn't end sin. But silence is a good start, silence, listening to something that's worth listening to, jesus, the word of God.
Speaker 1:Matthew 12, verse 37. Jesus says by your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned. What we say, literally what we say is either puts us on the side of salvation or damnation. What is it that we confess with our mouths? What do we confess really with our mouths? What do we confess really with our mouths? That's the truth about us. What do we say? Not what do we say in special circumstances, but what is it that we are saying with our lives consistently? What words spill out when we're emotional? What comes out of us when we're emotional, under pressure, crushed? What comes out of our mouths then? Because that is telling us the truth about us? Well, that, I think that's what we'll. We'll call this enough on.
Speaker 1:I had another possible meditation, all about what was going on at babel and acts 2 and um, all all that sort of idea, but we won't. We won't do that. We might. We could always come back to it at some other time, but, um, the variety of language. Anyway, we've covered that sort of thing. We'll stop here and we'll begin a new topic in our next podcast. Thanks for listening and, if I can just say this, I'm very grateful for the messages of support and encouragement that come for this podcast. Please share it with others who might enjoy this. I know it's not for everybody because it's quite a deep dive in places, but for those, for some, this, uh see, this does seem to um encourage and help and open hearts and minds and so on. So please share this and subscribe to it if you've not done so far, and let's see where it takes us.