Home > The Rainbow > September 2009 > Pastor's Blog

Being Bilingual

Years ago in California I worked with a guy from Iran, who had lived in the States for 20 years. He was bilingual: he spoke both Farsi and English fluently. And he said his brain was bilingual as well. He didn’t think in Farsi and translate into English when he spoke English. When he spoke English he thought in English, and when he spoke Farsi, as he would with family, he thought in Farsi. He had done it for so long he wasn’t even conscious when his thoughts switched languages.

We Christians are bilingual like my friend. We speak two languages: English, and “Churchspeak.” Speaking this second language is second nature to many of us because we have spoken it for so many years…a lifetime in some cases. We use much of the words and grammar without even realizing, and sometimes without actually knowing what the words mean or where they originated.

“Churchspeak” is an alien tongue in our society. When more than four out of five people in our area are not active in a faith community, the language of faith is an alien tongue. When we use this language to attempt to describe our faith to people, they have no idea what we’re talking about, much as I didn’t understand what my friend was saying when he’d vent his frustration at the bosses with a few choice words in Farsi.
In fact, this church language may even be an alien tongue to those of us who use it! Do you know why we end every prayer with “Amen,” and where did that word come from? What does it mean when we say the Scriptures are the “Word of God”? Why do we call the platform at the front of the sanctuary a chancel and not an altar? What do words like holy, righteous, sanctify, grace mean in the context of our faith? Where did words like hallelujah, sacrament, gospel originate, and what do they tell us about our relationship with Jesus, with God?

Much of our faith language originates in ancient languages, some of which have changed over the millennia – like the Hebrew and Greek in which the books of the Bible were originally written – and some have disappeared as spoken languages – like Latin, Aramaic, Ugaritic – but have their influences down through the centuries both inside and outside the Church.

Over the coming months here in The Rainbow we’ll feature a brief word study, if you will, on where some of the language of the Church comes from, what it means, and each word’s significance to us as Christians.

In His Grip,