“What are human beings that you care for them?” That question from Psalm 8, was asked by a man standing staring at a starry night illumined by a super moon. It led him to the conclusion that each human being is uniquely valued by God. That’s what we call a worldview, a way of looking at human life and the care of the world, and how we are called to live towards human flourishing.
Amongst the gifts and achievements of human culture and life together is language. How we speak to each other also betrays our worldview, and affects our shared history. Language enables a meeting of minds, hearts, wills and ultimately of people; but language also accuses, provokes, encases the hated ‘other’ in threatening rhetoric, and defines the speaker as the righteously and legitimately enraged.
We live and die by the way we use language. Our shared life on this planet depends on us all living creatively with the tensions of risk and trust, peacefulness and anger, fear and love. Because what is at stake when human lives are threatened is the glory and tragedy of human beings in our life together. Psalm 8 is a reminder, even a warning, about the precious premium God puts on each uniquely created human being, every last mother’s child of us. A poem by Elizabeth Jennings points the way.
Anger, pity, always, most, forgive.
It is the word which we surrender by,
It is the language where we have to live.
No wonder Jesus warned that one day we will be held accountable for every word we have spoken. Words have the power to make and break worlds.
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