MUSINGS: Why We Need to Fight for Words
The wisdom of C.S. Lewis applied to today's culture war
To me, reading a book that is truly inspired is like enjoying an exceptionally well-prepared meal. I savor every word; often, I put down the book to ponder what has just been said. In some cases, I feel like the words are forming an actual bridge between me and the author who may have lived centuries ago, transcending time and space.
One of those rare books is C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. It’s such a pleasure to read it because Lewis explains things. Unlike most of us, he doesn’t assume we know what he’s talking about. If he brings up a concept, he defines it first, which is so necessary, even today—no, especially today, when progressivism has weaponized words by twisting them so much that they have lost all meaning.
Apparently, we can’t even figure out anymore what a woman is and now are required to believe that one is “assigned” a gender at birth by the OBGYN, rather than by God when He knit us together in the womb.
In the preface to Mere Christianity, Lewis discusses exactly this dilemma, and I found it so compelling and so relevant for our time that I wanted to share it.
Far deeper objections may be felt—and have been expressed—against any use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity. People ask, ‘Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?’ or ‘May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?’ Now, this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that of being useful.
He goes on to explain why using language in this way spells disaster. As an example, he shows how the definition of the word gentleman changed from meaning a man with a coat of arms who owned some land, to meaning someone who is chivalrous, courteous, and honorable.
Whereas the old definition described an objective fact, the new definition was nothing more than the speaker’s opinion.
To call a man ‘a gentleman’ in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is ‘a gentleman’ becomes simply a way of insulting him. […] A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old, coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word.
If we let people define a Christian by feelings, not facts, as our woke culture is prone to do—we get stuck in the same dilemma.
Now, if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening’, the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously, a word that we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word.
As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian, they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served.
I hear a lot of people—especially “good Christians”—say, “What’s the harm in affirming that a man can be a woman, or that a union between two men or two women is a marriage, or that a man can get pregnant? Why not use their pronouns if it makes them happy?”
This is why. There is no stupider saying than, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Words are incredibly powerful. Because our language defines our experience of the world. When certain words get warped and twisted to mean what certain interest groups want them to mean, when words become forbidden to use or mandatory to use, they will after a while shape how we see reality.
Objective reality itself will not change, but after a while the distinction gets blurry. We’re not just rational but also highly emotional beings—what we say becomes what we think. What we think becomes how we feel. What we think and how we feel becomes our reality.
This is why we can’t give in. George Orwell, in his visionary novel 1984, explained it very well with the word doublethink, which meant…
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.”
Four examples of doublethink used throughout 1984 include the slogans: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, and 2 + 2 = 5.
We are already there, right now. Take the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which in truth is the exact opposite of respect for marriage as God defined it. Abortion, in leftist-speak, is now “healthcare.” The word woman now means whatever anyone wants it to mean.
Note that it took the documentary, What Is a Woman? in which Catholic podcaster Matt Walsh defined the term to mean “adult human female” to start a huge backlash against the gender ideologues. Before that definition, women didn’t have the ammunition to stand up and speak up.
As Christians, our first instinct is to be agreeable, to go along to get along. But the misuse and redefinition of important words is something we must push back against. Otherwise we will lose our own identity as Christians and let the powers of destruction take over.