Creation was and is through words. In the beginning God spoke and it came into being. In John 1 Jesus is called the Word and all creation was through him. No wonder that language is another area where the adversary of God is waging war against God and his people.
Humans are made in the image of God and are therefore endowed with the unique capability of language. Any human baby can learn any language on earth just by being raised in it.
God himself confused the language of the people in Babel, and ever since, language has been changing. Together with changes in the culture, a language has to change. New words are made for new things or concepts, and often the grammar of the language is adjusted too. Fortunately for people studying language, there are also elements of the language that don’t get changed, because they refer to unchangeable things that God created. This is especially true of pronouns: in all cultures through all times the differences between male and female were observed and acknowledged and words (among them the pronouns) were needed to refer to it.
In our time language is under attack. The (political) side who owns the language will win the battle. We need to reclaim the language if we want to rescue our civilization.
One way that the language war is waged can be called nominalism.
In nominalism the system of giving meaning to words is reversed. What I mean by that is the following. The normal way of giving a name (word) is by observing the qualities of what we want to name, and then we come up with a word that describes it. This happens with new manmade things (think computer mouse), or more abstract terms (e.g., freedom), or God’s creation (e.g., man and woman). Already Adam in the garden named the animals and Eve that way.
In nominalism it is the other way around. Something is only what we decide to call it. So a word means only whatever is meant by the people using it. And it is the media and academia who are deciding on the creation and meaning of words. Not you and I. This means a totally new word with new meaning can be formed (e.g., woke), but most of the time existing words will be redefined with a new meaning. This new meaning can be the opposite of the old meaning, which is extremely misleading to the people who aren’t aware of this change. An example of this could be the meaning of freedom. If this word is given the new meaning of “not being white,” then (only) everyone who is not white is enjoying freedom.
In nominalism nothing exists outside of the meaning of words. A deeper meaning doesn’t exist, unless of course it is given to the word. This means that truth is only your truth and real is only what is redefined as real. This way the people who control the words, for example, the word reality, decide what reality is. This way they can exclude anything in nature, or creation, or having to do with religion.
Another example, but a disturbing trend in nominalism, is how the words for God’s creation of male and female are being treated. Biology is being ignored, and the words man and woman mean only what the user of the word wants. So a woman is simply a person who identifies as a woman, who employs the word woman for himself or herself.
If everything else doesn’t matter anymore, the identity of the person who calls himself or herself man or woman is dependent only on how this person is feeling. And feelings change, so they can be different every day. The only thing the identity is still based on, in terms of language, is therefore the pronoun being used. Hence the unsettling tendency to change the most stable elements of a language, namely, the pronouns. And they can be different every day too.
As we can see, language is a tool that’s very much used in the war against God’s design of male and female (and of marriage and everything related).
But God has not left us defenseless in this war. He has equipped us with the best weapon available— his Word. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12, English Standard Version). It is not a physical war against flesh and blood; rather it’s a battle against “every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5). We are in the Spirit, and he will help us remember what we have learned from the Scriptures.
We fight with the Word of God and the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So be in the Word and stand in the light and let not God have to say, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6).
Annemarieke Ryskamp was born and raised in the Netherlands. She graduated with a master’s degree in Dutch Language and Literature from Utrecht University and worked for the Dutch L’Abri and as a secondary school teacher at United World College in Singapore. She attends Dutton United Reformed Church (MI), where she leads various Bible study groups and mentor groups. She has two sons who are currently in graduate studies.