A Node in the Web of the Emerging Church

The Word Emergent

Posted Sep 16, 12:04 PM | 2 comments | by Editor | Link

By Jonathan Brink, re-posted from Missio Dei:

There is a big question right now about words. What do we do with words?

I love what George Carlin said about words. It expresses so much insight into this thing we do with words. He said:

“I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. I say they are my work, my play, they are my passion. Words are all we have really. We have thought but thoughts are fluid. Weweeeemmmwehemmsmarumpeedump. But then we assign a word to a thought. Dink. And we’re stuck with the word for that thought. So be careful with words.”

And the question is, “Do we abandon a word?” And the reasons are many. The word has become overused. It has lost its original meaning. It’s become attached to a myth that it can’t seem to shed. We’re tired of saying it. All of which are good reasons to ponder. But are these really good reasons to abandon the original word? And what is the cost of abandoning the word?

I would first ask if we have a better word to substitute what we are abandoning? I get clarifying and being crystal clear about what we say. It’s helpful. But do we have something to replace it with, something more clarifying, more informative to the original idea? Because if we lose the original word and don’t replace it with something, we lose the ability to have or continue a meaningful conversation about a thought or idea.

Abandoning the word then has the capacity to exacerbate the problems we hoped to solve in the first place. Misunderstanding and myth become the norm rather than the exception because we have no way to talk about it.

“What thing? You mean THAT thing?”

“No this thing!”

“But that thing is this thing. Isn’t it?”

“For you it is, but not for me.”

“Say what?”

Life can easily resemble an Abbott and Costello routine.

I would then ask if we have moved past the original idea because something more meaningful has replaced it? Have we, as Brother Maynard asks, “Emerged.” And to what? I personally think we haven’t yet. We’ve simply grown tired of the space we are currently in. We’ve grown tired of the cocoon we’ve been living in for some time now. But I do think something is coming.

If we abandon the word, does that mean the word has lost its meaning or that we don’t want to work through the conflict (see #5) anymore. I really get this tension. Words have costs to our lives. Misunderstanding is often harder to redeem than if no words had been said at all. But I would offer that this leaves us in no better position. It simple abandons our ability to have a thoughtful and generative conversation about what we originally assumed and hoped was a meaningful conversation. It also leaves those are just beginning the conversation behind.

I keep coming back to John 1:1, which seems to echo Carlin in some ways. “In the beginning was the word.” And I love words.

Jonathan Brink is Managing Director of Thrive Ministries, a missional discipleship agency. He lives in California with his wife and three kids.

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1Todd Trembley 09/17/2008 02:22 AM

Here is a pertinent conversation between Martin Buber and an old man about the meaning and usefulness of the word ‘God.’

Old Man: “How can you bring yourself to say ‘God’ time after time? How can you expect that your readers will take the word in the sense in which you wish it to be taken? What you mean by the name of God is something above all human grasp and comprehension, but in speaking about it you have lowered it to human conceptualization. What word of human speech is so misused, so defiled, so desecrated as this! All the innocent blood that has been shed for it has robbed it of its radiance. All the injustice that it has been used to cover has effaced its features. When I hear the Highest called ‘God,’ it sometimes seems almost blasphemous.”

Buber: “Yes, it is the most heavy-laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it. Generations of men have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden. The races of man with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their fingermarks and their blood. Where might I find a word like it to describe the Highest! If I took the purest, most sparkling concept from the inner treasure-chamber of the philosophers, I could only capture thereby an unbinding product of thought. I could not capture the presence of Him whom the generations of men have honored and degraded with their awesome living and dying.” (Martin Buber, Meetings, 50-51).

2P3T3RK35Y 09/23/2008 07:55 PM

its not a brand, its an idea:

bottom up, organic, unanticipated, counterintuitive, network, dynamic, unscripted, non-hierarchical, relational, all these ideas and more and a result of the concept of emergence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence