POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.
POLONIUS: What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET: Between who?
Words have been in the news a lot recently. Most of the time we don't think about them much. We throw them around here and there, letting them fall where they will--sometimes biting and stinging, sometimes soothing and calming, Sometimes our words provoke thought and response; sometimes they have about as much substance as marshmallow cream. Sometimes the words directed toward us, like sticks and stones breaking our bones, hurt us. Sometimes our words are like junk mail. We send them out to anyone, anywhere and hope that someone will notice and buy. But the words most of us remember and hold dear have come like elegantly wrapped packages, and we store them someplace safe so that we can revisit them when we need to.POLONIUS: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Words are certainly powerful things,even though we're not always conscious of their power when we're using them. And that's why they've gotten a lot of attention of late. Soon after news got out of the tragic shooting in Tucson that left six people dead and others, including a state representative, wounded, words came under attack. "It was the violent language of the ultra-conservative political pundits that we hear on radio and television that incited the shooter to violence," some said. If only the words they use against those who disagree with them politically weren't so hate-filled, so full of metaphorical violence, this tragedy never would have happened. And in a great show of sensitivity, the Republicans responded by renaming their repeal of Obamacare "job-destroying" rather than "job-killing" because everyone knows that destroying is much nicer than killing. And all of this fuss over words when so far no evidence suggests that the words that are being blamed influenced the shooter in any way at all.
NewSouth Books has made news too. The publisher is releasing an edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the great masterpieces of American literature, without the words "nigger" and "injun." "Nigger" will be replaced with the word "slave." The book has been banned from many school libraries and classrooms through the years because of its use of politically incorrect language that many find offensive. The editor of this new edition believes that now teachers will feel more comfortable using Huck in the classroom, and students will be able to enjoy all that the book has to offer. With a master's degree in English, as a former teacher who frequently used this novel in the classroom, and an editor, everything in me screams NO to this ridiculous attempt at political correctness. One thing is sure: the students who use this edition of Huck Finn will not be enjoying all that this book has to offer because one of the great themes of this novel is the young boy Huck's growing consciousness that Jim, the character in the novel often described as a nigger, is a noble man who loves his family and is more of a friend and father to Huck than the white people in his life. Twain's message is anti-racist, and to draw attention to and remove language that a young boy would likely have used in the pre-Civil War South is to miss the point entirely.
It would be foolish to argue that words have no power, that we can use the language of violence and racism without consequence. But it's just as foolish to believe that if we only eliminate the language, there will be no more racism, no more violence. The words are just a reflection of what is in our hearts, and we know that hearts are full of hatred and violence, "desperately wicked," the prophet Jeremiah tells us. And so we must be careful not to oversimplify and blame words themselves (especially if the words themselves aren't to blame) for what lives deep in all of our hearts.
But the good news is that there is a powerful Word that was in the beginning, that was with God and was God. And that Word, in the most perfect way, reveals the Father's heart to us. Those who know this Word know the beginning of the end of violence and hatred. This Word--and not simply the elimination of words--is the solution to hatred and violence. In fact, this Word will both kill and destroy all that is evil, so that words will only ever communicate all that is good.
