Skip to main content

In Defense of Proper Pronouns

     Recently, I've noticed a disturbing trend within the church: the refusal to use pronouns when referring to God and Jesus. I had noticed the deacon at my church doing it, and while it annoyed me, I thought that it was just one of her quirks. Then, I noticed the same thing happening in the Lenten devotion I am doing. Now, they are still using You and Your during their prayers, but they are not using He, Him, or Himself. What they seem to be forgetting is that the entire reason why proper pronouns exist as a part of speech is to use them to refer to God and Christ.

    Imagine, if you will, that St. Paul also had this aversion to pronouns. In that case, Philippians 2:6-9 would read like this:

    "Christ was like God in every way, but Christ did not think that Christ's being equal to God was something to use for Christ's own benefit. Instead, Christ gave up everything, even Christ's place with God. Christ accepted the role of a servant, appearing in human form. During Christ's life as a man, Christ humbled Christself by being fully obedient to God, even when that caused Christ's death--death on a cross. So God raised Christ up to the most important place and gave Christ the name that is greater than any other name."

And had St. John also shared this viewpoint, John 3:16, the most quoted verse in the Bible, would now read like this: "For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Son so that everyone who believes in the Son may not perish but may have eternal life." Both of these passages become much clunkier and much less quotable using this formula. So why would we want to use it within our worship service?

    Our job as Christians is to make Jesus well known and make Him look good. When we refuse to use the proper conventions of our language, we are perceived as people who don't know what they are talking about. No one will want any part of a religion they perceive as being full of idiots. So let's make good use of the language we speak, and put proper pronouns back in their rightful place in our devotions and worship services. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Changed and Transformed

I am currently starting the fourth week of an online Bible study based on the book Living So That: Making Faith-Filled Choices in the Midst of a Messy Life  by Wendy Blight. I was drawn to the study because of the title. When I first saw it, I thought, Living so that what? Where's the rest of the title?  I now realize that the title was referring to those verses in the Bible that have the words so that  in them. The book has five chapters, each split into five parts and having a memory verse tied to the topic of that chapter. In the study, we are doing one chapter a week, and can split up the five readings for the week however we want to. I choose to read them on weekdays right after breakfast so that  I start each work day with some time spent in God's Word. Chapter One is "Jesus Came So That," and the memory verse is John 3:16. I figured, I know that verse in two languages. I got this.  I didn't figure I would have any trouble with that week because I alre...
3 comments
Read more

Fear

 "My fears would surely kill me If I didn't know the truth The things that I'm afraid of Are afraid of You" ~ " Things That I'm Afraid Of " - Josh Wilson     I had reached a place a couple of years ago where I was more or less fearless, or so I thought. Then the pandemic hit, and while I was never afraid of the virus, I was afraid of what would happen because of the quarantine and separation from others. Unfortunately, some of those fears came true, and having some fears come true has led to new fears feeling even stronger.     Recently, I have been bombarded with a wave of new fears that has threatened to overwhelm me. My car needs expensive repairs, my dad is facing an unfair situation that I can't help him with, and I am in a new relationship, which is wonderful and scary at the same time. In fact, I am posting this much later than I initially wanted to. Those fears were so strong that it was hard for me to put into words how I was feeling, and ev...
Post a Comment
Read more

I'm a What, Now?

"But you, dear children, are from God and have overcome them because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world"~1 John 4:4 Those of you who read my post " Life>Death " will remember that I talked about a young woman who called herself a suicide survivor because her father took his own life, and then used her status as an endorsement to talk about how suicide was not a selfish act. In my post, I stated that since she did not actually survive suicide, she was not a suicide survivor. However, I found out recently that family and friends of suicide victims being called "suicide survivors" is a thing. As in a psychologist-defined, support group namesake thing. As someone who has actually survived the temptation to commit suicide, this fact is quite frustrating. One reason is because of people like the young lady mentioned in my other post thinking they are experts in suicide because they are "suicide survivors." I don...
Post a Comment
Read more