The words matters because God matters

Words matters

If we are going to talk about the Word of God, there is something else we need to talk about as well. It’s the word WORD itself. 

I am not sure if you ever written a business contract, but without setting the definition correctly, it will surely leave lots of possible disputes. And if you forget to read the fine prints on any documents before you sign, there may come a day that you regret. 
 

So, in the business contract, it is usual to have a section called the definition, to set out the terms used in the documents, for clear communication. 

The definition matters 

Not every word has a single universal definition.

The Law, for example, could mean the Mosaic Law in the Bible, or the laws of a country or the laws of physics discovered by scientists like Issac Newton; or a law of arithmetic in mathematics; or the law of logics. 

While the laws of a country may change over time, the other scientific laws in nature(like the law of gravity) seem to stay. Why? Because this kind of law is found in the created world, not developed or invented by us humans. 

In a sense, and these could be hints God may have given us as a general grace pointing towards the designer of this world, so if one can suspect the hint towards the road to truth, if one is humble in their search.

The difference in interpretation of the same word - LOVE 

Like the commonly used word, LOVE, even this word has a spectrum. 
If a man confesses his affection towards a woman with the phrase "I love you". And she replies with the same phrase. Can we safely conclude they have the same understanding of love? 

The man might just used the word love to express his current warm and fuzzy feeling, the strong attraction that come and goes after a couple of years or months; and the woman might have expected love to be something eternal and never-changing type of promise. A likely case for future troubles, wouldn't you say? 

We say God of Love, but if our understanding of love as always forgiving and never correcting, a love with no sense of justice and no intention for growth of the object of love, could we say that is the love God has towards us? Would that be biblical, given the history of Israelites? 

The difference in meaning of the same word (East Asian version) 

There is a word which shares the same Chinese Characters that widely differs in meaning - 爱人. The first character 爱 means ‘love’, 人 means ‘a person, or people’.

And it is fairly easy to deduce the meaning, that 爱人 means ‘lover’. But it usually means ‘lover (girlfriend/boyfriend)’ in Korean(애인), ‘spouse’ in Chinese(爱人[ai ren]), and ‘the lover outside the marriage’ in Japanese(爱人[あいじん]).

 

It could be an interesting case of what linguists call a ‘false friend’-which you think you know the meaning because your language has the same word, but has different meaning in other languages. 

It is important to notice this characteristic of languages because, obviously, we use the sentences or the words to communicate; and the Word of God is written in languages, not psycho telepathic wave(?). God did not give us cave wall paintings, he gave us his Words; he chose to use human language in written form to let humans have a chance to know about Him and the history of humankind in His story.

Only when you are able to distinguish ‘what the Bible wants to tell us’ from ‘what’s written’, you can defend the Truth the Bible holds. Otherwise, you would be confronted with a willing skeptic who wish to be a Christian only if some questions could be answered.



The word as the contents of the Bible

As you know, the Bible is not a single book. It’s a library of books, and some books like Proverbs is a collection of accumulated writings over hundreds of years.

There are different books with different literary genres which  an educated person can interpret the words in certain ways.

The Bible is so grand that if one with an evil heart(or just a very simplistic heart even), can easily conclude something which is far from what the whole Bible says.

For example, while there are verses in the Old Testament that says the people of God would prosper, but Job suffered, and so has Joseph, and ultimately Jesus our savior who had no sin suffered a painful death. 

From this kind of verse, some people lose faith because the Bible didn't 'keep' the promises. Is the conclusion correct? But some might say 'it meant spiritual prosperity', or some might say it reflects the multi-dimensionality of life which the Bible presents as the whole library. If a part of Psalms says something, the Proverbs says something different, then the Ecclesiastes something different, it doesn't mean they contradict each other, it only means we have to read them together, not apart from another. So we can have a fuller view, a holistic interpretation that would connect closely to the real world. 

*On reading skill of the reader 

There is a verse where you are asked to obey the government (Roman 13:1-2) and where you were only told to give what has its image to whom it belongs(Mark 12:17, Matthew 22:21). So what do we do in reality? Wise answer? -It depends! If the government tells you to kill a certain race, we are to respect it? Obviously not. Because while God uses the authority in this world, He alone should be the true King. Then should we revolt every time a policy is against the Biblical view? Then what about the commands tell us to love our neighbor and becoming a peace maker? 

Some readers who lacked knowledge of the historical background and the sound reading skill even could conclude that the Bible supports slavery and polygamy… Come on, you know that it doesn’t mean that God told people to do something because it is written in the Bible. That is not how one reads a narrative. I am sure that you are not one of them.

My most favorite illustration is the two sides of the God of love and the jealous God - if you have ever in love, and you would see that jealous-free doesn’t mean mature love. If you are married and your spouse cheat on you, it is natural to get jealous. If you are a parent you would know to love your child doesn't mean always smile and never punishment. 

The other example would be the mercy of God and the justice of God. Some may expect God could be all forgiving without any consequences, but that would weaken the love mercy of God. Because if God is all forgiving and no justice is served for those whom are wronged, God is not really merciful for those people.

When read correctly, the Bible tells us the complexity of life which shows the dark side of the human race as well as the hope for the human race. The wisdom the Bible teaches are not monotonous. It teaches us the multi-dimensionality of life and instructs us to apply different approach for different topics and situations.