okay, I admit it, the title should probably read 'let's talk about gender...', but it's not nearly as attention grabbing - and I, quite unashamedly, want to grab your attention.
firstly I want to tell you how IRRITATING it is when I have to sing songs that exclude me. Secondly, I want to tell you how DEEPLY IRRITATING it is to spend a significant portion of my worship being IRRITATED.
are we getting the picture?
why am I telling you this? Well it is the chief reason why, this morning at college, most of the chapel were halted in their singing, and then some of us sang loudly and with a broad grin on our faces.
why?
because these words:
'no power of hell no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from his hand'
were wonderfully, beautifully, inspiredly replaced with:
'no power of hell, no human scheme, can ever change Creation's theme'
frankly blimmin' brilliant. That made me smile for a long while - couple that particular change with this one:
'the WORTH of God is satisfied'
and I can finally sing that song all the way through - so, yeah for that.
okay, so some of you now think that I'm being a bit oversensitive about the gendered language thing, so let me give you an illustration of why words are important.
imagine for a moment that the word chosen to represent all of humanity was, for the sake of argument, 'woman'. It makes sense linguistically and stylistically, doesn't it? After all, the word 'woman' includes 'man' - quite literally. It would make sense if we, after a few thousand years of using the word 'Man' to mean 'humankind', now 'swapped' and used 'Woman'. So, read the following text:
'Then God said, "Let us make Woman in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
So God created Woman in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
So, what do you think guys? Feeling included? No? What's your problem exactly?
words are important. The fact that we have 'always sung it this way', quite frankly, is not good enough. And this goes for our everyday language too.
Christ defined the whole of humanity and we need to start representing that in our language, because language forms our thinking.
now....where's that inclusive language Bible.........
firstly I want to tell you how IRRITATING it is when I have to sing songs that exclude me. Secondly, I want to tell you how DEEPLY IRRITATING it is to spend a significant portion of my worship being IRRITATED.
are we getting the picture?
why am I telling you this? Well it is the chief reason why, this morning at college, most of the chapel were halted in their singing, and then some of us sang loudly and with a broad grin on our faces.
why?
because these words:
'no power of hell no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from his hand'
were wonderfully, beautifully, inspiredly replaced with:
'no power of hell, no human scheme, can ever change Creation's theme'
frankly blimmin' brilliant. That made me smile for a long while - couple that particular change with this one:
'the WORTH of God is satisfied'
and I can finally sing that song all the way through - so, yeah for that.
okay, so some of you now think that I'm being a bit oversensitive about the gendered language thing, so let me give you an illustration of why words are important.
imagine for a moment that the word chosen to represent all of humanity was, for the sake of argument, 'woman'. It makes sense linguistically and stylistically, doesn't it? After all, the word 'woman' includes 'man' - quite literally. It would make sense if we, after a few thousand years of using the word 'Man' to mean 'humankind', now 'swapped' and used 'Woman'. So, read the following text:
'Then God said, "Let us make Woman in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
So God created Woman in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
So, what do you think guys? Feeling included? No? What's your problem exactly?
words are important. The fact that we have 'always sung it this way', quite frankly, is not good enough. And this goes for our everyday language too.
Christ defined the whole of humanity and we need to start representing that in our language, because language forms our thinking.
now....where's that inclusive language Bible.........
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