At the end of the school year, a sense of relief vibrates through many here at Veritas Academy. We look forward to reading, beaches, and yard work. We enjoy all of these things within the context of the Western democracy called America. Presently, I am working on some writing work for Omnibus VI and thinking a lot about the 1960s and early 1970s. Here are some of my thoughts about that time and about the present state of things (post “that time”).
During that time challenges that still haunt us today began in our culture (they really started much earlier, but came to fruition then). For a while, maybe since 1824 Western people had been tampering with words. We wanted to break free of their limits—particularly the meaning of biblical words. After we freed ourselves from the Bible, we looked to burn through the restraint of all other binding words. We wanted to keep some words and denude the power of others. The laws and the Constitution were gutted during the 20th Century. Suddenly, however, the thing turned on us (we should have known that it would). All of our words stopped having force. We had tried to dissolve the chains around our wrists, but we ended up dissolving the wrists and floor and the ground and the world.
As a result of this loss of faith in words, we stopped trying to persuade and started grasping for power using words to shout down and drown out (loud words = noise) rather than speaking to others and trying to earnestly persuade them. Today, we have corrupted words thoroughly. This can be seen in our pulpits where clear biblical condemnation of particular sins (presently in vogue) is obscured by preachers who use their voices to cover the text with an impenetrable fog. We see this in our courts where words are stretched (see “Interstate Commerce Clause”) or clipped to fit our present desire. Finally, we see this in our politics where words are twisted mercilessly on both sides of the aisle to misrepresent and slander the speaker. This trade, however, is deadly. When words lose all meaning, people tend to gravitate toward shouting, sticks, and, eventually, bullets. Thus, the peaceful protests of persuasion gives way to the shouting riots where force is used instead of good reasoning. Our world is darkening because of this failure to protect words.
This, however, points out one of the great tasks of classical Christian education. We believe in rhetoric (good rhetoric not empty “rhetoric”). We believe in words. We believe that they have or can have power. We must—it is an imperative for the survival of our civilization—learn to love and protect and value words. I have been blessed by my interaction with our students recently—particularly our seniors. They speak persuasively. I look forward to seeing what God can and will do with and through them. Please pray that we would again turn our hearts back to words and to the Word, that we would begin to listen to each other, and that we would have good words to speak. Words, persuasion, willingness to listen, and ability to reasons are prerequisites rather than results of democracy.
