The series was sparked when I read the following quote from the poet Christian Wiman: “Does the decay of belief among educated people in the West precede the decay of language used to define and explore belief, or do we sense the fire of belief fading in us only because the words are sodden with overuse and imprecision and will not burn?”
Could it be that we possess a low view of God, ourselves and others because we have a low definition of the words that are supposed to fuel our faith? Jesus said we can’t live by bread alone but by the nourishment that comes from God’s Word. Words are vessels of knowledge and nourishment, and yet in many ways we’re starving ourselves.
Tonight we begin looking at the words and definitions that we’ve neglected and let atrophy by digging into a wild text in the middle of the book of Judges, and a seemingly random word- shibboleth!