Language is a very powerful thing. In the Christian world, we have a set of words and vocabulary that only those on the inside can understand. If you are on the outside peeping in you will get confused. That was what I thought is happening when unbelievers that attend church finds it hard to understand our lingo. No wonder they find us strange people sometimes. It is already tough to help unbelievers to grasp the abstract truth about God, the fall, sin, incarnation, and justification, and to add words that only the initiated in the faith, the inner-circle, or born-again people uses among themselves can identify is really out of wag! Well, I thought we can change that by being relevant in our usage of language or to contextualize our vocabulary to modern secular terms so that they can hear in understandable sentences all about the precious gospel message. I thought that was a simple task. All would be fine.
But to my "surprise, surprise!" I discovered that within the faith community we have also developed different sets of words and catch-phrases. And they are linked strongly to different streams of theological persuasion within the church! So we no longer have to contend with helping the unbelievers to understand us but we struggle to try to understand each other because we have morphed into a tribal culture based on our pet beliefs. For example, we have a "father heart tribal culture" which uses a lot of "Papa said this, Papa said that" and ideas like love, father’s embrace, intimacy and hearing God seems like an exclusive culture to them - whatever that means is anyone guess. If you are not in the inner circle you'll be lost. Then there are those who have a "super-spiritual tribal culture" and they throw out lots of terms about the Holy Spirit, prophetic pronouncements, and sensing in the spirit stuff. How about the latest one who uses a set of lingo that makes you feel you are a "spiritual leper" and outcast with catch-phrases like - "fore-runners eschatology", "eschatology revolution", "intercessory missionaries", and a large glossary of insider terms and phrases, such as wilderness lifestyle, friend of the Bridegroom, Daniel anointing, eating the scroll, fasted lifestyle, burning and shining lamps, wholehearted lovers, zones of glory, corridor of glory, and many more that could be added.
I am not saying that these people are deceived in their faith but rather cult-like because only those in the inner-circle can understand! I hope I am making sense. I haven’t gone into the glossary of the “hyper-grace tribal culture,” the “prosperity gospel tribal guru”, and a whole lot of other sub-groups!
The gospel is simple. Our faith is simple. It’s NOT being simplistic but simple trust and faith. We create our own language and build a large glossary but we may be in danger of being cult-like. Worse, we think we are very impressive in our propagation, teachings, and proclamation of the gospel but in reality, many people go away more confused or decode it wrongly and fall into error.
The gospel is simple. Our faith is simple. It’s NOT being simplistic but simple trust and faith. We create our own language and build a large glossary but we may be in danger of being cult-like. Worse, we think we are very impressive in our propagation, teachings, and proclamation of the gospel but in reality, many people go away more confused or decode it wrongly and fall into error.
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