Sunday Meditation: Words Mean Something

NO CHOICE FOR YOU!

My husband and I are reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. In the Preface, Lewis describes the problem of words losing their commonly-understood and clear meanings. Certainly, if that was a problem 75 years ago when Lewis gave the original BBC radio broadcasts on which the book is based, it is multiplied 100X today in our politically correct and politically charged world.

The degradation of some words is obvious. Gay used to be a term that celebrated joy. In high school I had a role in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, a comedy about two young women, fresh out of college, on a European tour. It was a delightful romp. I can just imagine what a play of that title today would be. Just the thought of it brings X-rated images and dirty sniggers to mind.

The word "choice" is synonymous with ripping an unborn baby limb from limb in abortion. I can never hear the word in any context today without the chant booming in my head, "My body, my choice." But don't you dare make a choice that offends the liberal left! In their doctrinaire tyranny they scream, "No choice for you!" and mobilize their verbal weapons of mass destruction to annihilate you.



Gender used to be a grammatical term. Whether you used "la" or "le" for the article "the" in French, for example, depended on whether the noun was masculine, "le pan," or feminine, "la plume." And in Latin there was a third gender, neuter. Today, only God knows what gender means since its meaning changes daily.

When this happens to language we lose common understanding. What does the word "love" mean when someone uses it today? Or marriage? Or family? Or racism? Or privilege? You better find out before you are crucified for offending someone!

Social engineering is always preceded by verbal engineering.

I started re-reading Orwell's 1984 a few nights ago and find it much more chilling than when I read it in my 20s. Orwell's fictional dystopia is our reality. We are living in Big Brother's Oceania of newspeak, thoughtcrime, and facecrime. Anyone who fails to bend to the politically correct ideology of our modern socialists (Ingsoc in 1984, shorthand for English Socialists) must be destroyed. Bakers, photographers, and florists who refuse their services to celebrate same sex "marriages" must be ruined. Male teachers who refuse to observe showering girls pretending to be boys or failing to master the latest pronoun lexicon must be banned from education. Boys who wear MAGA hats must be vilified, expelled, and harassed for daring to support a sitting president (and for the color of their skin -- racism under oldspeak).

Jesus is "THE WORD, the Truth, and the Life." When we use words we need to make sure they correspond to Christ's TRUTH! Sadly, we live in a Pontius Pilate world where many mindlessly echo his question, "Truth, what is truth?" For many, there's no such thing -- only a quivering mass of slimy vocabulary that can be used against the latest target. Facts don't matter.  Those inconvenient little truths can be dropped down the memory hole. Feelings masquerade as facts and by their transient nature guarantee the ascendance of relativism, a constantly changing philosophy built on sand.



It's interesting that Al Gore used the title "An Inconvenient Truth" to peddle the bogus claims of global warming. When you consider the vitriol aimed at "climate deniers" who demand the data (which is not compelling and in many cases has been manipulated) you get a taste of the 1984 world where those guilty of thoughtcrime must be punished.

And now we have the latest idiotic statements coming from recently-elected junior Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who says the world will end in 12 years because of global warming... if we don't do...what? Please don't bother her little head with crazy questions like: "Where's the data?" or "Can you back that up?"

It's a sign of the decline of the U.S. that this nut-case is taken seriously and that the voters of New York elected her in a landslide.

One of the slogans in the 1984 world of Oceania was "Ignorance is strength." That has certainly proved true for the liberal left and their New York base. As long as they can keep the voters fat, dumb, and focused on freebies they get away with Chicken Little hysteria. No matter how many times the left's "facts" are proved wrong, the idiocy goes on. Many people have no memories and are ignorant of history. Yes indeed, "ignorance is strength" for Pelosi and company.

Back in the 60s we had Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb predicting that we'd all be dying of starvation by the 1980s from overpopulation. The truth? It became apparent toward the end of the century that we are in demographic free fall. Not only are babies out of fashion leading to some nations offering incentives to couples to have more children, but the fastest growing segment of the population worldwide is the elderly. An aging population has serious ramifications for employment, health care, economic sustainability, etc. Ehrlich was dead wrong, but he's still a guru even being invited to the Vatican despite his pro-abortion, anti-life bonafides.

Ehrlich's debunked end of the world scenario is now being repeated under the guise of the climate crisis. His doomsday bomb was a dud.  The hand-wringing hysteria over climate change will end the same way. There is, indeed, a crisis, but it's one of sin. The world is dying because the world and many of its leaders hate life! As for these other doomsday "threats" they are nothing but Madison Avenue PR to make money for certain segments of the population. Consider how much Al Gore reaped from hyping "alternative energy" sources while his giant carbon footprint dwarfs whole communities.

The WORD MADE FLESH is out of fashion these days except among the remnant. Deceit fills the world! Certainly, we saw that bigtime this past week with the Covington High School episode and the malicious lies surrounding it (not to mention the stupidity of those who swallowed the lies hook, line, and sinker and joined in the pile on). St. Paul warned against deception when he wrote: "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience." [Ephesians 5:6]

Critical thinking is more important today than ever before. We must learn it ourselves and teach it to our children, so that when the deceivers cry, "Wolf!" at least some of the people will have enough discernment and common sense to recognize it for the lie it is.

Lord Jesus, WORD made flesh, have mercy on us!