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The language factor

There are few things in life as important and wonderful, and yet perhaps also as misunderstood and under-appreciated, as is the human ability to reason. Without this ability of higher thought, we would be no better than animals – simple creatures surviving on little more than instinct and immediate sensory input. Without it there would be no civilization, no finely-crafted symphonies, no literary marvels, no architectural wonders, no philosophy and no appreciation for things beautiful.

We possess this wondrous ability because humanity was created in the image of the Living God, Who reasons (Isaiah 1:18). Reasoning cannot truly be accomplished apart from the ability to think clearly, and the ability to think clearly in turn requires the use of language. Since clear thinking requires the use of language, it is then reasonable to assume that a person’s ability to be clear-thinking is either stunted or enhanced by linguistic ability. Reasoning is dependent upon language.

As a people who generally consider ourselves more advanced than our forebears, we would expect to see that our use and understanding of our own language is now superior to that of bygone eras, but we instead find that the opposite is true. In thought, speech and language we are now dwarfed by America’s earlier generations. Could we find today such a noble band of clear-thinking visionaries as those of our Founding Fathers, even were we to search among the political elite of all fifty States and the entire Federal government? Could we today match them in thought and foresight?

We find today that poor spelling, poor grammar, low vocabulary, the inability to craft meaningful sentences (and with them muddled and overly-emotional thinking) are markedly on the rise in American culture, despite the effort and mountainous funding applied to the modern educational process. We have become a people of degraded language, and so of degraded thought, for we are a people that has rejected God’s Word as the basis of society and culture.

The most important purpose of great thinking, and of thought itself, must be understood to be the ability to dwell upon the issue of God, Who is Truth (John 14:6). The generations surrounding our Founding Fathers were a people educated by Truth, in Truth and for Truth much more so than we. Truth elevated language, and thereby elevated thought. Elevated thought produced superior generations able to dwell in the realm of noble ideas, of which God is chief. If we, as Christians, consider ourselves people of Truth, we must work hard at setting aside this current linguistic mediocrity, and work doubly hard to see that our children are not shackled to such mediocrity and reduced to an existence scarcely better than that of the pets in our homes. Great ideas await us. Let us make the effort to reach them.

 

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