Word Games

The refrain that love-is-love is simply linguistic and logical hogwash. English is a language with many words: according to some estimates, English has the largest number of words, the richest vocabulary of any language. Yet we have but one word for love, which means that love can mean just about anything. Love, at least in English, is utterly imprecise. Advertisers have compounded this problem by claiming that we will love a product, a claim they can make without challenge from truth in advertising laws. For example, a box of crackers might show what the crackers look like, but they often have to have an asterisk near the image saying that the product has been enlarged to show its texture as if people really expect the crackers in the package to measure three inches across. Sooner or later they will have to put another note explaining that some of the crackers in the box might be broken. But they can say that we will love the cracker, an absurd but allowable claim.

Given that the word love can mean affection, friendship, affinity, attraction, preference, tenderness, warmth, endearment, compassion, adoration, worship, appreciation, delight, desire, appetite, concern, kindness, liking, passion, infatuation, lust, philanthropy, benevolence, partiality, and so on, then to say love-is-love implies that lust is tenderness or affinity is philanthropy. The spectrum of meanings makes equating love with love utterly meaningless. But love-is-love is bandied about as if it were a mathematical equation, such as eight times eight is sixty-four. Given the spectrum of meaning for the English word love, such an equation is like saying eight times eight is dental floss.

Modern society has been playing such word games for decades. Many culture war issues are fought by bending words or making false equations. The refrain of my-body-my-choice, invoking personal autonomy as a justification for abortion, fails to acknowledge that the unborn baby is not part of the mother’s body. Likewise, the word right, as in those things to which we are entitled, has come to mean license, as in indulgence or lack of responsibility, as in doing what we feel like doing. I have a right to partake of illegal drugs. No, but many people think this way. I have a right to drive a car. No, driving is not a right but a privilege regulated by the government. The word games being played often take manmade ‘rights’ and equate them with God-given rights while at the same time denying God-given rights or placing God-given rights under human authority. A good example of this was the mandatory shutdowns of churches during the pandemic. Worship is a God-given right and our solemn duty, but governments greatly overstepped their purview by banning the worship of God, supposedly for the ‘common good.’ For some reason the mantra of my-body-my-choice did not extend to the experimental vaccines that were mandated for employment, travel, and school attendance.

We ought to be sensitive to protecting our rights and as Christians we ought to be focussed on love, but the modern distortion of words has made it seem like opposing abortion is un-American and immoral, that opposing immoral behavior and immoral marriage is unloving. That is what my-body- my-choice and love-is-love are designed to do. They are designed to undermine Christian moral values and confuse us into thinking that God ordains the unjust taking of human life and immoral unions. These word games imply that we are the bad guys for opposing immorality.

So, if people bend and redefine words to make us villains, it should not be surprising at all that God will be blamed for human evils. Indeed, God made the universe and declared it as good, but having created man, He declared it to be very good (Gen 1:25,31). But it was through the sin of Adam and Eve, with satan’s help, that evil enters creation. We still live in a fallen world with a fallen human nature, the fallenness of which is mankind’s doing, not God’s. Yet we have people today saying that God made me this way, therefore expressing my desires and cravings is legitimate. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Cain did not and could not say that God made him that way so he was justified in killing Abel. King David could not say to God that he either raped or committed adultery with Bathsheba because God made him that way. We cannot blame God for our behavior. Adam and Eve tried to blame God when they ate the forbidden fruit. It did not work for them. It won’t work for us.

—Fr Booth