Alive and Unchanging

       

        English has been spoken for over 1,400 years, and in that time it has changed so much that it can be difficult to read literature written just hundreds of years ago. If you read Dickens or Shakespeare you may feel like you’re reading a foreign language. In a way, you are! Many words now have completely different meanings than they did originally. How does that happen? Well, people use words and phrases in the vernacular that don’t follow the rules, and they eventually end up in the dictionary and grammar books. For example, chillax, whatevs, and awesomesauce are now recognized words, recorded in the dictionary. I know, I know. It doesn’t seem right, but to truly love a language is to also embrace its evolution. Besides, we’re not alone. There are currently over 7,000 spoken languages and it happens to them all, so chillax.

Unlike English, Latin is considered a dead language because nobody speaks it as a first language any more, and it’s not used for communication. As a result it has stopped changing, which makes it quite useful as an international standard for specialized studies like science, music, and law. The rules of Latin are forever seared into the pages of books, so purists don’t have to worry about the language adopting crazy new words like English does. They also won’t enjoy the charm of clever wordplay that is part of a thriving culture, but whatevs.

So, living languages change while dead languages do not. However, there is just one language that is both alive and completely unchanging. It’s the language of heaven, and it’s alive in that it speaks to people from two thousand years ago as much as it does to modern man. It’s also unchanging because it spans from eternity to eternity and encompasses every idea that has ever been or ever will be. There’s simply no need for change. It’s already the complete and perfect Word of God. We refer to Hebrew and Greek as the original languages of the Bible, but perhaps it’s more accurate to consider those the first translations by which God has given us a window into the communication of the spiritual realm. The language of heaven is something humans cannot yet fully understand, so God has given us the Bible and His Spirit to introduce us to the culture of heaven. It’s a kind of orientation packet from God to us. If we understand that He’s given us the Bible because He loves us, it might cause us to study it more, embracing the fact that our Father is helping us prepare for eternity with Him. Ignoring God’s words will only perpetually frustrate us and continue to decay our worldly cultures. Conversely, when we accept the Bible as truth and absorb its concepts, it’s the only language that actually changes us. For those of us who believe that and have put our faith in Jesus, that’s awesomesauce!