Do you speak Christian?

Leave it to Marcus Borg to take a perfectly good observation and muddle it with his own theological liberalism. “Christianese” is a problem: it allows people to “lurk” in Christian circles without it being revealed (including to them) that they don’t know Christ. It would have been sufficient to make that observation. It could have been made by comparing the modern misusage of these terms with all of orthodox theology. Instead, Borg leads the interviewer through his own theology as though it it the standard by which such words should be defined or discarded.

I read this yesterday and although I also thought it was “muddled” at points, I was struck by these two statements:

When Christians forget what their words mean, they forget what their faith means.

and

When Christians develop their own private language for one another, they forget how Jesus made faith accessible to ordinary people.

I have seen this scene played out over and over and over again in ministry: the earnest Christian trying to convince an unbeliever to embrace Christ while the unbeliever stands honestly bewildered as to what he is talking about. And the Christian witnessing to him knows absolutely no other way to present the Gospel except by the terms that he uses in church.

One thing that helped us move past “Christianese” was teaching young children. You’d better know what you’re talking about when you get up in front of a room of five-year-olds with their hands raised. :-)