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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Ecclesiastical
Pronouns In today's western world
the traditional, even Biblical understanding of pronouns has undergone a
distortion of nonsensical proportion.
As for me, I firmly embrace the Genesis 1:27 male female pronoun
understanding. I also believe
that pronouns are important, although in a different way, when thinking of
our relationships in the local expression of church.
Read 1 Corinthians 12:13, noting the pronoun "we".
It's foundational to how we are to understand and experience
church. "For we were all
baptized [immersed] by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or
Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to
drink." The Greek word
"baptizo" transliterated as "baptize" in our English
New Testament was not a religious word in the first-century Greco/Roman
world as it is in our world. Baptizo
meant to immerse, submerge, drench, sink, dip or other such synonyms.
It was an everyday usage word.
Whether it was watering a potted plant, washing a dish, or taking a
bath, it was a matter of baptizo.
1 Corinthians 12:13
states that "we", each one of us in the Body of Christ, have
been baptized, immersed, submerged, drenched, or dipped into one body, the
church. The moment God's
Spirit entered your very being was the moment you were immersed into the
lives of God's people, Jesus' present-day earthly body.
With the above in mind,
here is my point to this article. When
thinking about being immersed into church, I sometimes hear, as I did
recently, Christians
refer to their church family with the pronoun "they".
"They", for example, "will have a prayer meeting
tonight".
I would use the
pronoun "we", as in, "We will have a prayer meeting tonight".
The pronoun "they" infers a separation from one's church
family. The pronoun
"we" infers a union with one's church family.
"They" excludes. "We"
includes, and church is all about inclusivity.
You might think this is
a matter of semantics, pronouns with no practical relevance.
I think differently. Words
are important, as I believe Jesus claimed when He said that what we speak
comes from our hearts (Matthew 12:34).
If our words originate in our hearts then they have significance.
What our mouths speak, our hearts believe, whether we realize it or
not, and we often don't realize it. The
"we" or community aspect of church has been burned into my
Scriptural psyche, so it's only natural for me to have an awareness of
what I hear people say about church that others might easily miss.
1 Corinthians 12:13 is
telling you and I that when each one of us received the Holy Spirit into
our lives, each one of us was baptized or immersed into the Body of
Christ, into the lives of our brothers and sisters in Jesus.
The community of fellow believers we call church, then, is not
about "they". It is
about "we," and that makes ecclesiastical pronouns important.
In our day when there is
so much uncertainty in every aspect of our lives, a "we" or
communal experience of church is important to get us through these
uncertain times. As life
becomes more difficult, whether it is World War Three, an economic
meltdown, a civil war, the collapse of the organized traditional church,
or who knows what else, "we" need each other.
I need you and you need me. Okay, I'll let
you decide whether you needing me is stretching things a bit too
far. Whatever the case, it's
not about "they". It's
about "we". It's
about inclusivity, and there's nothing nonsensical about that.
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