Words Matter: How The Left Is Strangling The Church And Culture By Redefining Language

Take the word inclusion. The religious left has made it to include unbiblical sexual behaviors. As a matter of fact, the word itself cannot be found in the NT.

If you read the NT, the emphasis would reveal far more about exclusion than inclusion. Jesus talked about the wheat and the tares, separating sheep from the goats, the righteous from the unrighteous, the lost and found. He said Pharisees and Sadducees were a “generation of vipers” and “whited sepulchers.” Jesus said that men who abuse children should have a millstone tied around their necks and be dumped into the deepest part of the ocean. This is not the language of nice or inclusion, rather it is one of exclusion. Even talk of heaven and hell reveals a two permanent state that includes some and excludes others.

It is profoundly ironic that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have called for a radical NEW Christian inclusion in the CofE over sexuality issues that will nullify clear biblical teaching and broker in feel good sexualities to appease the few.

Take the term “same-sex marriage”. It is not to be found in Scripture. The Bible recognizes only one type of marriage, that between a man and a woman, no exceptions. Culture might recognize a Heinz 57 varieties of sexualities, but there are only two genders male and female. That will not and cannot be changed by divine fiat. It is now an act of bigotry to talk about husbands and wives. One must talk about “marriage equality.”

You can invoke all the words starting with ‘trans’ and it will not change the Creator’s original intention.

God has not changed his mind however much mainline denominational leaders wish He would.

“Diversity” is another word that is being terribly misused. In its current usage, diversity means alternative sexual behaviors, not just cultures and religions. To criticize a person’s behavior is to invite the charge of “hate”, another word that has lost all meaning.

If you dare oppose homosexual behavior in the name of “tolerance” you will be accused of “hate”, even violence. To say ever so politely that you disagree with homosexual behavior, you will invite accusations of hate. You face being torn from social media, losing your job, facing fines and possibly going to jail.

Will the time come when the Bible itself is considered hate speech and be torn from pulpits?

Progressive is a word that once would have described evangelicals who opposed slavery and believed in serving the poor. Not anymore. The word has come to mean bishops, clergy and laity who have moved beyond Scripture to embrace unbiblical sexual behaviors. Exit progressive. Progressives were once called liberals and revisionists. No more. The softer word “progressive” makes them seem relevant and tolerant.

Take the word, “tolerant.” It once meant that we could agree to disagree on second order issues. No more. If you disagree about anything sexual, you are intolerant, a homophobe, racist or hater.

“Reproductive health care” or “women’s reproductive rights” is a euphemism for abortion and infanticide. We got this recently from Gay Jennings, president of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies in her blast against the SCOTUS decision allowing the RCC not to place kids with homosexual parents.

News anchors now talk about “Gender assigned at birth” as if that’s something different from one’s biological sex.

Conversion therapy has been described as bullying and bribery by Jayne Ozanne, a lesbian lay woman in the Church of England. Conversion or reparative therapy is a freely sought desire to change one’s same sex attraction, but that is deemed unacceptable to Ozanne and increasingly, the Church of England’s House of Bishops. In time, conversion therapy will be universally banned because, we are told, it causes homosexuals and lesbians to become depressed, even suicidal.

Truth itself is manipulated to mean ‘your truth’ or ‘my truth’; absolute truth has gone out the window. Truth is now contingent on feelings and attitudes. For most post moderns, absolute truth simply does not exist. When Jesus says he is “the way, the truth and the life”, you would probably hear from the likes of Sheldon Cooper of the Big Bang Theory, “that is your opinion”. Nones are probably the biggest single group of absolute truth deniers in America today.

Michael Knowles of PragerU points out a number of instances where the left has taken a term and revisited it with damming consequences.

An “Illegal alien” is now an “undocumented immigrant”. A “Christmas tree” is now a “holiday tree;” Just semantics? Not really.

“Global warming” has morphed into “climate change”, but the climate is always changing. The “war in Afghanistan” has become an “overseas contingency operation.” “Government spending” becomes “investment”. “Hard earned money” becomes “greed”. Opposing a Democrat in the White House is “obstruction”, opposing a Republican is “resistance.”

On social justice; justice is getting what you deserve without favor; social justice is what you don’t deserve because you are favored.

As Knowles observes, he who controls the words controls the culture. “The Culture War is a war of words and there are consequences in politics, education and the media.

“What is in a word; everything. Words shape how we think and view the world. The real danger is using soft words to deceive us all from the harsh realities of life.”

As Mark Steyn said recently, “Don’t surrender the language. Reclaim the language. It’s the first step to recovering our civilization.”

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WORDS MATTER: HOW THE LEFT IS STRANGLING THE CHURCH AND CULTURE BY REDEFINING LANGUAGE

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
July 6, 2021

Malcolm Muggeridge once described himself as a vendor of words. He was probably the most renowned journalist of the Twentieth Century and used words better than most writers of his time. He was a words man par excellence. Mercifully, he did not live to see the debasement of language that has become the mantra of the left.

Take the word “gay”. It used to mean someone who is happy, perhaps funny, but then it was co-opted by the homosexual community, and now it describes a behavior that has systematically killed millions of men. But “gay” stuck and now you can no longer use it to describe how you feel because it has changed its definition. The word gay softens harsher sounding words like homosexual or sodomite to make it more acceptable and palatable to the ear. To even suggest that anal sex might be the cause of AIDS is to invite cries of hate and homophobia.