Just as you cannot do algebra without numbers, so you cannot know, discover or communicate meaning without clear, accurate, and precise language. It is not too much to say that bad grammar is the enemy of truth. Christians should then prioritise language, since it is the media of propositional truth.
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.– Dorothy Sayers
Words are our only means of knowing the world as rational beings. You cannot think without words. Go ahead, and try it: try thinking without words. Form pictures in your mind without words, but you will soon find yourself naming those objects, and even making short sentences about them. You cannot know the world without thinking in words. Words are the basis of rationality and self-awareness.
Not surprisingly, we read that creation came into being through words, and John’s Gospel tells us that those words spoken at the beginning were through the Word of God Himself. God’s Eternal Son is the Word: the communication and explication of the life of God. God knows Himself through His Word by His Spirit.
The written Word, God’s special revelation, is the foundation of knowledge about God, ourselves and the world. Words themselves are part of general revelation: language mediated through culture, through which we obtain light. All we know comes through words.
Richard Mitchell’s Less Than Words Can Say may seem like an odd choice for as a book to explain Christian education. After all, Mitchell did not profess to be a Christian. At times, he can even be lewd. But Mitchell is one of the few writers who understands that language is more than a convention: it is the very filter we use to understand reality.
Less Than Words Can Say starts, as The Abolition of Man does, with some errors committed by professional educators. In this case, the error is not logical positivism, but a kind of bureaucratic-speak that steadily destroys meaning while posturing as formal and educated. Mitchell shows this is more than irritating; it represents a hollowing out of meaning (a worm in the brain, as he calls it) and this by people who are meant to teach meaning to younger minds.
To illustrate, Mitchell then imagines a tribe of people, the Jiukukwe, who have few active verbs in their language, and plenty of passives and indirect forms of address. He pictures these people doing little in the way of forming a civilisation, except clawing for food out of tree bark. The problem with these people is not a lack of sophistication with words or grammar (for their language is highly complex). The problem is that their language spirits away personal responsibility, and the resulting worldview creates a passive and complacent way of life. The way the Jiukukwe understand reality is shaped by their syntax and grammar, not by some outside force. The meaning of the world comes at them through the filter of their language.
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We are failing them. They are left to their own devices, their own ways, their own griefs and sorrows. Our boys are living in a world that let them down. They turn to sin and sin, when full grown, leads to death. It may take a village to raise kids well, but healthy villages are built around healthy families that support one another. Our village is broken because our families are broken, and our kids are paying the price.

We are failing our boys, and the consequences are deadly. There was another mass shooting at a school this week. These have become all too familiar. We know what to expect. A young man found or bought a gun and used it to commit a terrible atrocity.
The rush to politicize these events is always the same. We scream for gun control. We demand mental health help. What we never seem to do is look in the mirror.
The demands placed on society are always pointed at someone else. Democrats point at Republicans. Republicans point at Democrats. Red states blame blue states, blue states blame red states.
But nothing changes. And, of course, the carnage is much worse than we usually admit. Boys and young men are killing at a terrible rate. Two mass killings in our country in just a few weeks grab the national headlines, but that isn’t all. The news in South Carolina has been dominated in recent weeks with stories of teenagers killing and being killed.
Who is to blame? We all are. We are failing our boys.
How do we know we are failing our boys? Because our boys are failing or falling behind in nearly every category imaginable.

Nationally, 70% of high school valedictorians are female.
In 2010 only 44% of college applicants were male.
At the turn of the 21st century, boys received 70% of “D”s and “F”s and only 40% of “A”s.
As of 2016, the dropout rate for boys is 40% higher than for girls.
2/3 of the population labeled as “learning-disabled” is boys.
For every 100 girls who repeat kindergarten, 194 boys repeat.
Boys are 50% more likely to be held back a grade than eighth-grade girls.
The average 8th grade girl writes at the level of the average 11th grade boy.
Boys make up 70% of medicated preschoolers and kindergartners.
Boys make up 80% of the suspects in juvenile courts.
Boys are punished more harshly than girls.
In the past two decades, ADHD diagnosis rates have doubled. Boys make up a majority of these cases–often because they can’t sit still for extended periods in class.
Male prisoners make up 93% of the prison population.

Every time we endure another outbreak of violence, we lament. We yell. We wring our hands, we blame others, and we look for a quick solution.
But we don’t look in the mirror. We don’t look into our communities and ask the question of why our boys are the way they are. We resist hard questions and even harder answers.
We must begin to ask hard questions. Hard questions that may cause uncomfortable answers.
If we ask how we are failing our boys, we may discover that we are failing our boys because our boys are not being raised in intact homes with men of character loving them well. If we ask hard questions, we are going to be forced to deal with hard realities.
It is hard for us to acknowledge that broken families lead to broken boys and more broken families. It is hard to acknowledge this because we love those broken families.
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You might be surprised how many people you’ll encounter today who want something more. Realizing that their life is empty, they long for what they do not know. Their behavior may be offensive to you—even abhorrent—but they were made in God’s image, and the loss of their destiny has made them unfulfilled and desperate. Don’t see them as an object, but look beyond their exterior and see them as Jesus does.

So (Zaccheus) ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” (Luke 19:4-5)
What is your opinion of Christ? Do you see him as an important historical figure? The Son of God? The Savior of the world? The King of Kings and Lord of Lords?
All of these are true, but there is so much more. He is the One seeking you—the One wanting to stay at your house. It’s personal.
An Unlikely Host
Zaccheus was an unloved man. Any self-respecting Jew would never bow to work for those who were enslaving Israel. Zaccheus was seen as a traitor to his people and a sub-human to the Romans he served. And there was more that made Zaccheus unwanted and unloved. He was the “chief tax collector and he was rich.”
But there was something that no one knew about him … he longed for more. We can’t know his whole motivation, but when Jesus came to his town of Jericho, Zaccheus laid his self-esteem aside and climbed a tree to see the Messiah.
You might be surprised how many people you’ll encounter today who want something more. Realizing that their life is empty, they long for what they do not know.
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