To Communicate, and How

Right now I am reading David McCullough's biography of John Adams. It is a bit tedious for me, but I am determined to get through it. As much as I find the history interesting, I think the thing that most intrigues me about the book is the command of our language that Adams and his contemporaries had.

These are the men who penned our Declaration of Independence. When I think about what passes for English now in comparison to their writing, I feel embarrassed. We do not hold our language up to the high standard that they did.

We treat our language the same way we treat our food. We drive down the road while stuffing a Gordita or Chalupa into our mouths after squeezing on a little red high fructose corn syrup Tabasco Ketchup mixture from a foil pouch and call it dinner. We txt OMG and LOL to our BFF's from our IPhone and Crackberry and call it conversation.

Our current poor language habits are no more communication the way it should be than those pathetic sacks of super high sodium meat by-products and white processed flour are proper meals. With all our education and twentieth century wisdom, I believe we can do better.

I am going to pick on my own kind here for just a minute. As Christians, you will find in the same congregation, those who will only read from the King James Version of the Bible but cannot put together a proper sentence. What's up with that?

OK, I like my fluff every now and then as much as anybody else when it comes to what I read, watch or eat. So I just want be aware that when I'm reading Twilight, eating Papa John's, and listening to SexyBack, I may not be rising to my ultimate goal as the wise and enlightened man that I long to be.

As a Southerner I want to preserve our unique culture and way of speaking as much as anyone; but I am afraid that many of us have equated a southern accent with a ticket to forget basic correct grammar. Then we wonder why we are sometimes perceived as backward and stupid.

There is no doubt that there will be errors in what I write, maybe even in this blog! I am working on becoming a better writer and, therefore a more effective communicator. I intend to teach my children, if I am ever blessed with them, to value and respect our language for what it is. After all, I think it is fair to say that words are something of extremely high value to our Lord.

John 1:14, And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

If you can't communicate effectively, how can you expect to have any influence? And if you do not have any influence, what do you have? You could still probably get a Chalupa.