Words from WW Blog

 “But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Mattew 12:36-37)

I’m six weeks into wearing Invisalign retainers. It’s not something I envisioned having at age seventy-one, but my son-in-law dentist said I’d be looking like a toothless teddy bear if I didn’t do something. Thus, I’ve joined my two braces-wearing granddaughters in the retainer world.

The main problem is that I haven’t adjusted to the speaking part of wearing retainers. I find myself stumbling over words with more than three syllables. B’s, F’s, P’s, T’s, and W’s seem to be the main villains. They resemble splinters that a person tries to pry loose, hesitant to give up their attachment to the inside of my mouth. At my cross-country practice last week, I was showering the young runner sitting in front of me as I spat out any word with a beginning or ending “s.”

The result is that I’ve become more focused on the words than the message. I’m hung up on making sure I don’t “spray it, don’t say it!” someone as I’m stuttering through words like “preparation” and “fundamentalism.” I’m more concerned with what I could say than what I ought to say.

It’s a parable about our culture. These days, people seem to get hung up on the words, and what they spit out makes about as much sense as skinny-dipping on a snowy afternoon in an isolated Eskimo village. There’s a lot of bad theology being sputtered about these days that complicate the simplified and simplify the complicated.

For example, some people don’t talk about sanctification. Any word with fourteen letters sounds like trouble and high-brow intellectual grade mish-mash. Better to simplify it into understandable off-the-wall theology, such as “coming to a point where we will no longer do bad things. Beyond wrong.”

What?

There’s the oversimplification of grace that tells us “Don’t worry about sin. God’s grace is sufficient.” Translated, a new generation of spiritual journeyers interpret that as saying, “What you do doesn’t matter. Sin freely, and then be freed.”

With our generations becoming less knowledgeable, or interested, in what the bible says, culture fills in the blanks for us. God terminology flowsd out of bad theology. The rock our lives are anchored to could be categorized as a weightless pebble.

I know, I know, that sounds pessimistic and borderline crochety. What can I say? My retainers hurt and the student in front of me is wishing he had brought an umbrella to cross-country practice. I’m trying to keep my “s’s” to a minimum.

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This entry was posted on August 19, 2025 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Faith, Jesus, theology

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