Say It With Me

Squirts likes to talk. He gets that from his mommy! Many of our friends and family have been participants in one of his chatty exchanges. I say “exchange,” but in truth the conversations are usually fairly one-sided. He talks. You listen. He gets that from his mommy too! (Just kidding! Really! Just kidding!)

I love to look up or walk into a room and see him holding court with another adult. The grown-up usually stands slightly bent at the waist, nodding vaguely, with eyebrows arched and a barely open mouth circled in surprise. If a thought bubble popped up over the adult’s head it would probably say, “Wow, this kid can talk!” or “When do I get to say something?” or “What happened to this kid’s mom and dad anyway?”

Luckily, Squirts’ penchant for talking is matched only by his desire to be in constant motion. So, those unexpecting adults are usually freed pretty quickly.

As a result of these child/adult conversations, Squirts has developed a funny vocabulary of unusually adult words and phrases. These are things he obviously hears someone else say and then repeats in one of his future one-on-ones. A few that come to mind:

• “Actually…” usually followed with a correction about something you’ve just said. “Actually, Chewbacca’s nickname isn’t Chewy, it’s Joey. I just heard Han Solo say it.”
• “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Translation: “How many times are you going to tell me to get dressed/pick up my toys/take my plate to the sink?”
• “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Rarely.
• Squirts: “Say it with me: Di.”   Me, “Di.”
  Squirts, “plo.”  Me, “plo.”
  Squirts, “do.”  Me, “do.”
  Squirts, “cus.”  Me, “cus.”
  Squirts, “Diplodocus.”  Me, “Diplodocus.”
  Squirts, “Good job! You’ll do better next time you read this dinosaur book to me!”
•  “What the hell?” Definitely a good argument against encouraging these child/adult conversations!

We Christians do the same thing sometimes. We hang out with other Christians. We have conversations with other Christians. And we start to talk like other Christians. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, if the words and phrases we use make Christianity seem like an exclusive club with its own language, it might scare non-Christians off.

Every organization, interest group or following of people develops its own unique characteristics that say, “This is who we are.” Golfers wear unfortunately colored pants and sweater vests. Environmentalists carry eco-friendly coffee cups in their reusable grocery bags. Technophiles have their own language of bits, bytes and gigabytes.

Christians speak “Christianese,” the lingo Christians use when talking about our faith.

The difference between our crowd and many other groups, is that we hope to bring as many people into our collection of followers as possible. As such, we want to be as welcoming, open and clear as possible about what we say. With that in mind, here are some phrases I can think of and how someone uninitiated into the language of Christianity might interpret them:

There are some books and Christian leaders who advocate ridding our faith of Christian lingo. That seems ridiculous to me. It would be absurd to expect Christians not to have our own way of talking any more than it would be to ask a techie not to use tech-specific language. Most of these words and kinds of phrases make sense to Christians and have an important place and purpose in our faith.

But to many non-Christians, they might seem condescending and exclusive. And even to new Christians, they can seem patronizing and intimidating.

Maybe, we could just try leaving the lingo at the church doors and just say what we mean. Instead of saying we are going to “share our testimonies so non-believers will ask Jesus into their hearts,” we might say we’re going to “talk about how Christianity has changed my life and might change theirs as well.”

I’m curious about what you think about this topic. Do you ever find yourself talking “Christianese?” What are some of the phrases that stand out to you?

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