Jesus is the Word, but language is of the devil, or so it seems sometimes. Ideas may seem clear, but language less so. Or is it vice versa? Yet, what else do we have to work with but words in languages?

Worse still, for lack of a better term, our ‘politicized’ culture optimizes for bad-faith language use. Words are weaponized, taken out of context, ‘canceled’ or tabooed, outdated or of-the-moment, meme-ified, tagged as sarcastic or ironic, literal or serious or ‘just joking’, ‘locker room talk’, dog-whistled, unspoken, quiet or out loud, approved or vetted or massaged or evolved or spun until no one is confident about whether anyone means what they say or says what they mean.

My kid says I have a ‘journalistic’ voice, meaning I try so hard to be so careful and so clear that I end up sounding to him like I don’t actually believe or even feel strongly about anything. I ‘both-sides’ too much. I over-qualify everything. I’m tentative. I downplay. I understate. I’m a ‘fence-sitter’, so afraid of offending either side of a debate that I’m incapable of taking a side. I try to appease and appeal to all sides irregardless (yes, I know that’s not a ‘real’ word) of which side is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

It’s a problem and we’re working on it, although I don’t like any of the proposed solutions thus far. Get angry, be emotional, outrage to engage, name-call? It all sounds like algorithmic metrics designed for maximizing eyeballs, views, likes, clicks, etc. instead of a mutually collaborative conversation to approximate truth.

I’d like to go the other way. My little blog that (almost) no one reads. No metrics, no monetization, no hustle, no grind. Just me and my thoughts. Vibing. 100% aura.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about language, and whether ‘Gospel’ is the best term for the approach to interpreting scripture I see in Jesus. But while I’m vibing, the clock is ticking, the world is turning. And the school bell schedule is unrelenting. Kids need to get to school on time. More later.