Out of focus

 

Words have definitions, but that doesn't mean people use them properly. Nor does it necessarily mean people are talking about the same thing when they use the same word.

According to Cambridge, to evangelize is "to talk about how good you think something is," while according to Macmillan it is "to tell people about Christianity in order to persuade them to become Christians." Then there's Merriam-Webster, which says it means "to preach the gospel to."

Any way you cut it, to evangelize means to talk something up. I evangelize for hockey, Dick Vitale for college basketball. Thomas Sowell evangelizes for limited government, Bernie Sanders for expansive government.

Every Christian should evangelize for Jesus because that is what he instructed when he said to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

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Since every Christian is supposed to evangelize (albeit in his or her own way) every Christian denomination should have evangelism at its core. In other words, every Christian denomination should be evangelical, for the word is an adjective, not a noun.

Whereas people can, based on their denomination, be identified as Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, etc., nobody can be identified as Evangelical based on their denomination... but that doesn't stop the media, including the Christian media, from slapping a capital E on the word and using it that way.

Though the two greatest evangelists of the twentieth century were Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II, it is only Graham who gets referred to as "an Evangelical." The third greatest evangelist of the twentieth century (at lest from an American perspective) was probably Fulton Sheen, but he was a Catholic bishop who always appeared dressed in full regalia and because of that nobody'll ever call him "an Evangelical."

Maybe I'm just being OCD'ish, maybe this isn't that big a deal, but it bugs me and I think it matters. The loosey-goosey way the word evangelical has been abused for the past few decades has created lots of misunderstanding and led to lots of specious labeling, with absolutely zero redeeming qualities as far as I can see.

A big part of the problem is that the word evangelical is often used by non-Christians who: 1) use it in the capital-E sense and 2) think they are describing an actual, specific sect of Christianity; but 3) are really just using it as shorthand for "white male heterosexual Republicans" because 4) they don't know the real definition, and also because 5) they have never actually listened when Christians talk about their faith or when conservatives talk about their politics.

But like I said earlier, even the Christian media is guilty of misusing the word evangelical. They do this not because they are unaware of its real definition, but because of unthinking laziness in their desire to speed their sentences along so they can opine about whatever the main topic is. Many pastors, priests, deacons, apologists, and theology professors are guilty of the same thing, and therefore it's no surprise that average Joes are prone to misunderstand and misuse this important word where religion is concerned.

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Too often, evangelical gets thrown out there as a lazy synonym for Protestant, which is an injustice not only to the word but also to Catholics who openly evangelize for Jesus (like Scott Hahn and Matt Fradd, who can be seen here bantering together).

It is also an insult to Protestants whose opinions get lampooned by ignorant people whose Pavlov's-dog reaction to certain words causes them to miss the steak because they're salivating over the sizzle. 

More importantly, using evangelical as a synonym for Protestant is an injustice to Christianity itself. This is because of the simple fact that believing Protestants and believing Catholics are equally Christian, and, like I already said, every Christian is called to evangelize.

And it's not like using evangelical as a synonym for Protestant is the only error going around. The waters get even muddier when people -- many of whom are practicing Christians and Protestant themselves! -- nonchalantly talk about "Evangelical" Protestant churches versus "Mainline" Protestant churches without ever bothering to say what they mean by the former versus what they mean by the latter.

It's easy to get the impression that those who talk about "Evangelical" versus "Mainline" while personally identifying as the former are implying that the former are more serious and authentic... which is another way of implying that the latter have their priorities screwed up because they're more concerned with bureaucratic nicety than theological truth-telling.

Conversely, it's easy to get the impression that those who talk about "Evangelical" versus "Mainline" while personally identifying as the latter are implying that the latter are smarter and more accepting... which is another way of implying that the former have their priorities screwed up because they're more concerned with puffing themselves up than with being a conduit for the love of Christ.

But we can't be sure what people mean if they don't actually say it.

The fact that we are in the material world means that everything (or almost everything) about the spiritual world is out of focus to us or completely invisible to us. This is natural (supernatural, actually) and as it should be, whether we like it or not.

Good impressionist paintings are just blurry enough to enhance their beauty and elevate their impact. Good songs often have lyrics that are just imprecise enough to strengthen their impact by allowing them to resonate with listeners from every walk of life.

So it is not an automatically superior state for everything to be crystal clear. Sometimes 'tis positive and proper for things to be out of focus to one degree or another. But again, words have definitions, and when people use them to communicate important matters, it is paramount that everybody be crystal clear about what the key words mean... for when it comes to communication, clarity is not merely an important thing, it is everything.

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Poor communication is the taproot of many serious problems in the life of every person and every society. It could be written about endlessly, so I won't drag this particular post out any longer.

It's just that sloppy, slipshod use of the word evangelical has been going on for years and irks me to no end, and my itchy fingers couldn't wait any longer to type something about it.

There is so much that is already unclear about everything -- even in the natural world, before we even start to think about the supernatural -- that there's no excuse for people to make things worse by incorrectly using words from their own wheelhouse.