Words and People

A group I'm part of has been watching a series of talks by the English Christian John Stott, called The Bible and the Christian Life. We've just taken in "The Problem of Culture", the fourth of six talks. What we've seen so far has been excellent: crystal clear, comprehensive, engaging, judicious -- and sometimes even funny. All this from a man who is 87 years old!

The following are loose paraphrases of three propositions from Stott's second talk ("The Double Authority of Scripture"), which I find helpful, thought-provoking and reassuring:

1. There is no ladder by which our finite minds can climb into the infinite mind of God.
2. Our words clothe our thoughts.
3. God has condescended to clothe his thoughts in human words.

By "clothe" I take the primary meaning to be disclose; though I realise our words can often cloak, i.e. hide, our thoughts.
I'd also like to broaden 2. and 3. a little by suggesting that words not only clothe thoughts, but people -- including people's characters, feelings etc.

I haven't thought long and hard about my sense of "clothes" or 'people-disclosing words', so refinements, extensions and criticisms are most welcome.

God's thoughts and ours

What follows is the first one-and-a-half paragraphs from a short piece, written by John Piper, primarily for people who teach and preach the Bible. It's entitled, "Preaching as Concept Creation, Not Just Contextualization" (Thanks Chris B.).

At the end of the article, Piper lists ten God-given truths that would seem ludicrous to some. I'd add to Piper's ten -- for example, that into this distorted, frustrated world, God's new creation has been brought by Jesus and now exists within it. Nevertheless, I find his main point helpful and suggestive.

As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures they already have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important.

We must pray and preach so that a new mental framework is created for seeing the world. Ultimately, this is not our doing. God must do it. Read rest of article (Desiring God Ministries).

If Piper is on to something, questions like the following could help us think about sermons -- before, during and after them: How might God be stretching or overturning the ways in which we think about the world? Or, more to the point, what entirely new ways of thinking might He be suggesting?