Word Salad
All day they twist my words;
All their thoughts are against me for evil.
[Psalm 56:5]
Today we are bombarded with attempts to distort the meaning of words to the point of senselessness. For example:
Shadow-Naming or Dead-Naming: Calling a transgender person by their actual, original name given by their parents at birth. For example, calling Caitlyn Jenner "Bruce," the name his parents gave him when he was born as a boy; the name he used for 52 years before he changed it and his identity to Caitlyn.
Toxic Masculinity: Men who are overtly masculine.
Climate Anxiety: Being stressed over rhetoric claiming that mankind will go extinct if we don't eliminate fossil fuels.
Bropropriate: When a man takes a woman’s idea and takes credit for it.
Mansplaining: When a man talks down to a woman.
Ciz: The opposite of trans... in short, a normal, unconfused person.
George Orwell, in his classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, called it Newspeak: "a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate 'subversive' concepts such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thought-crimes, since they contradict the prevailing orthodoxy."
More recently, Google Docs has set out to correct gendered language like "chairman" or "fireman," by replacing them with "chairperson" or "fireperson." "Landlord" apparently implies slavery, and the word for a computer's motherboard is sexist.
How many times have you watched examples of inner-city youths, products of a failed educational system, speaking in a gang slang that you cannot comprehend? Even worse is the intentional bowl of word salad that is increasingly used by government spokespersons, crafted to disguise, obfuscate, or obscure, rather than clarify.
Have you noticed how different the Scriptures are? Simple and direct! One has to work very hard to make the Bible say something other than what it clearly says.
We are left wondering, why are they doing this? As one observer noted, “Sloppy words make sloppy thought possible.” Misusing language not only damages our ability to think, but also inhibits our ability to communicate, making it easier to control inattentive people.
This is not restricted to politics or advertising. It even happens with Scripture. Peter warned, "…untaught and unstable people twist Scriptures to their own destruction..." [2 Peter 3:16] This is why every book of the New Testament contains multiple warnings against false doctrines that twist or distort God's Word.
Much of the English language was formed under the tutelage of Scripture, and the worldview of the great works of literature was crafted under its influence. That is why it is impossible to understand the heritage of great literature without a rudimentary understanding of the Bible.
If we want to be wise and insightful people, it is essential that the Bible is informing our worldview, and not the culture. The Bible lifts people up, while secular culture pulls them down.
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.
[2 Timothy 2:15-16]