We May Need to Change Our Vocabulary—If We Want to Make Maximum Impact

One of the quotable quotes I’ve used frequently in my writing over the years is George Santayana’s declaration that “those who fail to learn the lesson of history are doomed to repeat it.” 

I had that truth driven home following a presentation I made a few weeks ago to a Sunday school class at First United Methodist Church of Orlando. 

The class, which was launching a month-long series on social justice, had  invited me to be the first presenter. Since social justice has been a theme about which I’ve spoken and written over many years, I felt ready to address it. But maybe I was getting a little too confident.

From my perspective, the Old Testament would win the “Impact Award for Social Justice”—if there were such a thing. The New Testament—like the Old—tells us to act justly and help the disadvantaged. But the Old Testament gets far more specific in describing what justice actually looks like when lived out. And it urges us not to merely do what is just, but to speak up and defend the whole concept of justice, particularly as it applies to the destitute and marginalized. It calls for us to be activists and advocates.

I felt that both my Sunday school presentation and the subsequent discussion I moderated went well. But I also realized I’d been preaching to the choir. There was too much consensus, if that’s possible. So when the class ended and several of us continued to engage in discussion informally, some of those who weren’t “choir members” became more willing to lay their cards on the table.  

“I’m really tired of hearing about social justice,” said one man who hadn’t spoken during the formal discussion. “I’ve heard so much about social justice—and I’ve been berated so often by those using the term—that I don’t care if I never hear that term again. In fact, I almost didn’t attend today just because of the title of your presentation.”

To his credit, the man went on to lament the fact that he had become so jaded. He recognized, he admitted, that these were issues that needed to be addressed. But whenever he heard the term social justice, it struck him at such a visceral level that he automatically shut down.

Because it was almost time for the church’s worship service to begin, our ad hoc discussion came to a close before we had an  opportunity to seriously pursue the issue the man had raised. But I continued to think about it throughout the day, and right on into the next week.

In fact. I kicked myself—figuratively, of course—because I’d been in similar situations before and had been more creative in how I made my presentations. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten the lessons learned back then. So as George Santayana had warned, because I had failed to retain the lessons my personal history had taught me, I was doomed to have to relearn them.

From early 1978 to early 1981, I was youth/assistant pastor at Avondale Memorial Church, a large congregation a half a mile or so from Avondale College, which is about 80 miles north of Sydney, Australia. For well over one hundred years, Avondale College has been the training ground for all Australians and New Zealanders studying to be Seventh-day Adventist pastors. 

Much as is happening in politics in the United States currently, the region around Avondale had become highly polarized over theology. It seemed everyone held strong opinions, everyone felt compelled to share their strong opinions, and everyone wanted to label as friend or foe those who agreed or disagreed with their particular strong opinions.

The college had its own congregation. But some of the students and some of the faculty preferred to come to the congregation where I worked. A high percentage of Adventists in the general community came to that church. Right across the road from the church was a very large retirement community, where a lot of retired pastors resided, most of whom came to the congregation where I was. So I was confronted with quite a few of the perspectives that were swirling in the theological cauldron that was boiling at the time. 

Fortunately, I noted quite early in my sojourn at Avondale Memorial that certain terms had become buzzwords that set off an emotive reaction. The moment a speaker used one of those words, listeners accepted or rejected everything said subsequently. 

For example, I discovered that if I said “Christ’s acceptance of us” rather than “justification,” hackles didn’t seem to rise nearly as quickly. And if I said “Christian growth” rather than “sanctification,” far fewer people made a split-second decision to accept or reject me in total. 

As a result, I tried to create a very simple yet accurate theological vocabulary that got important concepts across without being bogged down by the baggage that was associated with certain more traditionally used terms. 

But good lessons once learned can easily fade from our memory as we move on to new and slightly different—though in reality considerably similar—situations. Thus my failure to appreciate what a loaded term social justice had become for some. 

I’m still a believer in and an advocate for social justice—and a lot of other values that I believe should be recognized universally as important. But I’m also rediscovering that terms  often carry baggage that cause listeners/readers to dismiss out-of-hand what is being said because of the bad experience they’ve come to associate with those terms.

In our religious and our political exchanges—and even in general conversations with family and friends—I think it would be prudent to recognize that even seemingly innocuous terms can become toxic. Thus, we would communicate better and be more effective if we reworked our vocabulary so we could get across important concepts without the risk of having them dead on arrival simply because of the terminology we use.