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Hi,
…. My wife is enthusiastic about your website so I took a look at it. I didn't read much of what you write but what staggered me was the amount of it. You’ve been writing all that stuff for 25 years. How could there be anything left to say? Why are religious people always talking and talking and writing? Why don’t you just say what you think needs to be said and then stop? There should be a quota of words. One word for one thing and no ambiguity. That would make life easier for you and for my wife and everyone that looks at your website. Just a suggestion. Kevin
Dear Kevin,
Something jumped out at me instantly from your letter: the phrase, “One word for one thing and no ambiguity.” That has a familiar ring to it. I don’t know if you were aware, but it could be taken straight from George Orwell’s novel “1984”.
Orwell (1903—1950), writing in 1948, imagined Britain ruled by a totalitarian Party under the leadership of Big Brother. Using surveillance, propaganda, and force, the Party controlled every aspect of people’s lives: thought, language, relationships, work… even emotions. I went to the trouble of finding a copy of Orwell’s novel and then finding his exact expressions (I like words!). The Party’s policy on language was: “Each word had one meaning and one meaning only… All shades of meaning were eliminated.” Ambiguity, nuance, metaphor, poetry… all excluded — even unthinkable, because there were no words for them. In this new ‘language’ (Newspeak) the range of thought was narrowed to what the Party approved: “to make all other modes of thought impossible.” If something couldn't be said, it couldn't be thought, and so rebellion was impossible. The Party assigned its own meanings to words. And so propaganda and lies were called ‘The Ministry of Truth’, torture centres were ‘The Ministry of Love’’, and the war department was called ‘The Ministry of Peace’. In Newspeak there were no words for justice, freedom, rebellion, nor (of course) for diversity, equity or inclusion. After a time, people would accept this as normal. Does it sound familiar?
No, thank God for what he called ‘Oldspeak’ – normal language. It doesn’t fit in the straitjacket of ‘one word, one thing’. It plays and laughs. It dances and sings. Humour is one of the most subversive forces in the world. See how dictators hate it and try to silence the comedians. Every word we use has layers of meaning, and echoes of other words, like rolling landscapes. That’s how poetry happens, and irony, and emotional resonance. That's how it shows up the threadbare thoughts of tyrants. That’s how it reveals what such thoughts attempt to hide — where “collateral damage” means civilian deaths, and “enhanced interrogation techniques” means torture, and “downsizing” mean mass layoffs. That's how it shows up the intellectual poverty of tweets and slogans and memes and soundbites, and all the attempts by sheer repetition to replace a complex truth with a simple lie. The really distressing thing is that Newspeak doesn’t have to be completely successful in order to do real damage. Even partly successful it causes great harm. It offers lazy slogans that make real reflection look tortuous and history look like bunk. When a sizeable portion of the electorate takes these for the truth the damage is done.
There’s a long history of Christian resistance to dictatorships: from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich, and all more recent repressive regimes. But since we’re talking about language, I’ll mention only the Christian word ‘logos’. No, it’s not the plural of ‘logo’, it’s λόγος, the Greek word for ‘word’. It has a wider meaning than the English: it also means ‘meaning’, ‘harmony’, ‘inner principle’…. The New Testament says, “The Word, λόγος, was made flesh.” And St Paul said to the Colossians, “In him all things hold together” (1:17). It is the truth that holds us together. The Logos is not a narrow ideology that forces us into uniformity, but a vast truth that enlarges our horizon to infinity. If I tell a lie I am chipping at that unity, I am attempting to break up the logos. If our lives do not grow out of the truth we are like different species. We have no ultimate connection with one another; we are like discarded pieces of a jigsaw. Jesus spoke about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, a sin that cannot be forgiven: Matthew 12:31–32; Mark 3:28–30; Luke 12:10. This seems puzzling when you think that God’s mercy is without limit. But the sin against the Holy Spirit is a sin against the truth. This means more than just telling a lie. It means substituting falsity for the truth across the board. It is not like giving someone wrong directions; it is more like turning the signposts around, so that truth is falsity and falsity is truth. This is unforgiveable, not because God refuses forgiveness but because someone whose very breath is falsity would never think of asking for it.
How many words is that, Kevin? I’m afraid I've added a great many more. Is there any hope? In one of Herman Hesse's novels there’s a musician who died and went to heaven, but his happiness was lessened by a horde of little black and white entities that followed him everywhere he went. What were they? They were all the superfluous notes he had ever played in his lifetime. If I ever get that far, I expect I’ll be similarly afflicted by the superfluous words I have spoken and written. Still… I can’t see myself cutting back any time soon. As some kind of justification for this excess I hope there is a hint of a song or a dance in what I write, because I regularly pray the psalm that begins, “I will sing for ever of your love, O Lord” (Psalm 88:1). And as for dancing, King David danced around the Ark of the Covenant, the place of God’s presence (2 Samuel 6:14–16). As long as I can continue to make even a few arthritic shuffles I’m unrepentant and completely happy!
Donagh