Have We Lost Our Language?

A question to be asked concerns whether we, the chosen people and royal priesthood, 1 Peter 1:9, NRSV, have forgotten our language and therefore our identities. William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination at 84, argues Christians have ceded their ability to speak their distinctive language when entering the public arena. Stanley Hauerwas, in a great essay called "A Story-Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down" in Community of Character, devotes a fuller treatment of the devastating damage done when one's language is lost both as to foundational traditions and community structure.

Scripture seems abundantly clear as to what the Lord demands from humanity. The Old Testament prophet Micah pronounced the demands of God: "The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: see that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God." Micah, 6:8, CEV.

This inquiry will seek to locate Micah's words for today, the 21st Century, and ask anew, as did God in that trial, "O my people, what have I done to you? In what way have I wearied you? Answer me!" Micah, 6:3, NRSV. The response is surprisingly similar to that given by the Israelites in that trial when they protested their faithful adherence to the law in offering sacrifices for their sins. For we who believe, and by nature of this project and this writer's location focus will be limited to American Christianity, may likely respond but Lord we have confessed your name, we faithfully attend worship services, say our prayers, at least before our meals, and do good works, or least provide support for a variety of social justice projects.

Philip Yancey, in What's So Amazing About Grace at 15, recounts a conversation with Gordon MacDonald, pastor and former spiritual advisor to President Bill Clinton, wherein MacDonald observed: "The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the poor or heal the sick. There is only thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace."

Thus, if in fact the church and the world have merged identifies, and now speak the same language, then a most serious concern exists as to the state of the faith today and for the future. This inquiry will therefore investigate whether indeed church and world are indistinguishable, and whether our languages have conflated. One intuitive conclusion is that the social and cultural structures of the United States, in essence the language we use to define ourselves, militates against the faithful embodiment of biblical Christianity.