“Studying and Teaching the Bible” was one of my course titles as an education professor at Moody Bible Institute. Instruction of a text began by committing one hour of time to show students 30 minutes of commercials. In order to speak in our current culture, the point was to find clues about how others spoke to an audience. Students watched for certain ideas: mottos, catch-phrases, key concepts. But my interest always settled on what is called “the bridge.” Each commercial uses something in culture to communicate their idea which sometimes has precious little to do with their product.
“The bridge” I most remember was from a Southwest Airlines commercial during football season; I fell off the couch, I laughed so hard. There was a line outside a movie theatre for tickets. A man dropped some money, stooping over to pick it up. The woman just behind him sees his stance, instantly becoming a quarterback, hands ready to receive the snap. In a very loud voice she begins to call out signals, “Two, Thirty-two! Two, Thirty-two! Hut! Hut!” The scene ends with the woman’s contorted face mid-shout while the dumbfounded gentleman wonders what in the world is going on. Abruptly the audience is now shown a simple picture of Southwest Airlines with the voiceover which says, “Want to get away?” Southwest Airlines has some of the best commercials because they speak to their audience where they are, about their interests, at a certain time.
“Our word is our bond” is essential for commercial growth connecting interests to truth. Firms must “deliver” on goods and services or they are out of business. Companies that cater to deception do not last very long. “The word” would spread quickly about poor service or inaccurate advertising. Truth in business rests on verbal guarantees.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Germany celebrated the classic Ronald Reagan verbal broadside this month 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell. President Reagan brought his common speaking approach that he learned through barnstorming for General Electric to The White House. Confrontation with enemies was wrapped in absolute language. As the architect of the infamous line, speech writer Anthony Dolan reminds us
Reagan spoke formally and repeatedly of deploying against criminal regimes the one weapon they fear more than military or economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral absurdity, their ontological weakness. This was the sort of moral confrontation, as countless dissidents and resisters have noted, that makes these regimes conciliatory, precisely because it heartens those whom they fear most—their own oppressed people. Reagan’s understanding that rhetorical confrontation causes geopolitical conciliation led in no small part to the wall’s collapse 20 years ago today.[1]
“Trust but verify,” another Reagan phrase, turns on its head our contemporary love of sincerity. Politicians who hope that dictators will change through conciliatory speech are laughed at behind dictatorial doors. Unfortunately, commitment to a “religion” or life-view in western culture is premised upon sincerity. Sincere people are anxious to believe in something. But sincerity is not the basis for business or production, verification or accountability, truth or falsehood. It makes no difference if I believe something or not. What matters is if the something in which I believe is all together historically reliable, factually authentic, universally authoritative, and personally transforming. Sincerity is nothing more than my opinion.
“And God said” is the plain spoken, repetitious phrase[2] in Genesis 1 which marks the inception of authoritative speech, true Truth, material origins, and the supremacy of The Word. Genesis—unlike every other creation story—says the physical world is a result of God’s speech. “It is a divine word of command that brings into existence what it expresses.”[3] Psalm 33:9 simply says, “He spoke and it was done.” God’s will was a decision expressed creatively through His creation. While The Creation Account begins by verifying what we see, what we see is based on what God says.
“Words matter.”[4] Words are first shaped by our thinking.[5] Words then shape the way we think.[6] Words are necessary to interpret what we see.[7] Words express our interpretation of the world.[8] Words counteract the drive toward the visual alone. Words are pregnant with meaning. Words trump image. Word will always interpret our visual world. “And God said” made “and there was.”
“An instrument of power”[9] is the word in the hands of an advertiser. So I would end my lesson via commercials with my students. The Church is susceptible to the abuse of language through “bumper sticker theology”: flotsam and jetsam awash on the shores of our Christian thinking from the wreckage of theological ships long ago lost at sea. What we desperately need is a community within which to interpret words.[10] Further, we must recommit to the lost art of Scripture’s public reading.[11] We should, with Hebraic thinkers, “eat history”[12] so as to know God’s power through His words. Apart from words, we are left outside the authority of “and God said” only able to say “in my opinion.”
Mark believes that it is wrong to make words mean whatever someone thinks they should mean; and that if a person says something, others should be able to count on it being true.
[1]https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704795604574522163362062796.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
[2] Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29.
[3] Gordon Wenham. 1987. Word Biblical Commentary: Genesis 1-15. (Nelson): 18.
[4] An internet search on the phrase suggests while our culture may abjure meaning, speech has power.
[5] What we believe drives our understanding.
[6] Benjamin Lee Whorf first made this hypothesis about language.
[7] Bruce K. Waltke. 2007. An Old Testament Theology. (Eerdmans): 63.
[8] Some would have us believe that Genesis is simply one nation’s construction of reality based on language. “Signification” believes the sign bears relation to what it signifies. “You can believe in God even if He doesn’t exist.” Yet, the key to understanding Genesis is that the word emanates from the God who speaks. We do not intuit interpretation. God gives His interpretation by His authority. God’s word is reliable whether we believe it or not.
[9] Josef Pieper. 1992. Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power. (Reprint, Ignatius): 23. Pieper was concerned, “For the general public is being reduced to a state where people not only are unable to find out about the truth but also become unable even to search for the truth because they are satisfied with deception and trickery that have determined their convictions, satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design through the abuse of language” (34-35).
[10] Waltke, 13-14. While I recoil at some of Kathleen Norris’ doctrinal definitions in Amazing Grace her explanation of monastic Scriptural interpretation is a lesson to all (Reprint, Riverhead, 1999): 253-56.
[11] https://www.challies.com/archives/sponsored/this-weeks-sponsor-unleashing-the-word
[12] Every Christian should read Marvin R. Wilson’s Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Eerdmans, 1989) from whence comes this reminder of what Hebrews practice at seder, commemorating the Passover event of Exodus (chapter 12).