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How Language Changed Our Relationship with God
The power of life and death is in the tongue says Proverbs 18:21 but the sentiment does not translate well into our modern language. The reason why is because the ancients had quite a different relationship with language than we do. For them, words were power. In the first couple thousand years of known history, language had the ability to change the minds of the gods. In fact, one could hold them in one’s power if only the right spell or incantation was spoken. I am not arguing with the Bible verse, just our contemporary interaction with it. No separation between the word and the object it described existed. This…
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The Care and Feeding of the Human Spirit
For most of us, the line between soul and spirit is an amorphous one. In fact, many use the terms interchangeably. However, I believe they are two separate, though not unrelated, parts of our identity. Just as God exists in a trinity, so do we, being made up of body, soul, and spirit. Because of this, I think a quick definition of the soul and the spirit is in order. The soul is the seat of your thoughts and emotions. The soul often receives a bad rap. To behave in a soulish way is Christianspeak for acting poorly. But the soul is an important part of our makeup. We spend…
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The Treachery of Contempt: Killing Each Other Softly
My first brush with contempt happened in sixth grade. A new boy enrolled in the tiny Lutheran private school I attended. I knew how hard it is to break into a new school, so I tried to be nice to him, to make him feel welcome. For whatever reason, he responded to my friendliness by calling me an unspeakable name. I still remember the moment for a number of reasons. Firstly, no one ever called me a name like that before this. Secondly, the sexually explicit term he called me felt like an assault. I felt the hurt all over my body. You have heard that it was said to…
Healing Through Art & Words
