I’ve recently been listening to Clint Smith’s, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery in America. Smith is a historian and a fantastic writer, and it’s a book I would definitely recommend.
I couldn’t help but notice one small and yet consequential change of vocabulary in the book, which details Smith’s visits to various sites of slavery throughout the American South (and a couple of other places). In the book, Smith never talks about slaves, only enslaved people.
That semantic change intends a complete reorientation of vision. To speak of enslaved people is to call to mind mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. It’s to see entire families sold and separated at the will of white masters.
Slaves is a word to reduce generations of people to the narrow, brutal, exploitative confines of dehumanizing work.
Yet even within those abhorrent conditions, enslaved people lived the human experience. They fell in love, gave birth to children, buried their elders, wrote poetry, danced. To speak of them as persons, not simply slaves, is to use language to name the breadth of that reality more fully. Enslaved people never stopped being human, even when others refused to recognize the humanity of their slaves.
Words matter. I’m just citing a recent example where I noticed.
About words mattering . . .
I was grateful when one participant in my rule of life workshop—which I offered as a pre-order bonus for my last book, In Good Time, and will offer again—asked about a word I had used in a homework question.
I had given participants this question: What are the habits you already feel invited to practice in faithful response to God’s voice?
Invited was the word that piqued her interest. What did it meant to be invited by God? How would we recognize a divine invitation when it arrived?
I hadn’t chosen the word, invited, with a lot of deliberation. But I can see why the word matters, at least as I understand the qualities of God’s voice and the nature of his activity. Invitation suggests something of the goodness and gentleness of God.
First, invitation suggests appeal. You get invited to dinner, to a party, even to make a presentation at a fantastic conference. You’re glad to have been invited, feel honored to have been thought of, sense that saying yes is for your good.
As a rule of thumb, we’re glad when invitations come along.
Seen another way, if your friend wants your help to pack and move apartments next weekend, she doesn’t usually invite you. She asks nicely and sweetens the deal with pizza.
God’s movement in our lives comes as invitation. It’s always a path toward greater freedom and more abundance of life.
To say yes to God is to say yes to good. Not immediate good. Not good as we always understand it. But fullness and abundance of life. That’s what it means to follow Jesus, who called himself the way, the truth, and the life.
You and I could think only of being commanded out of sin. And that’s part of the story, of course. That language does in fact matter because it reminds us that we owe God, our Creator, our submission. It is good and right to recognize God’s authority.
But to think that we’re also invited into newness of life is to imagine the spacious places that God creates by his commands. Honesty and justice, generosity and service: these lead out of the suffocation that deception and oppression, greed and selfishness create. Sin is a cramped place—and God says, “Take my hand. Stretch your legs here, in this wild and wondrous landscape of obedience.”
Invitation suggests the good to which God calls us. It has another dimension, too, also reminding us that God’s hand is never heavy on our arm. There is never coercion with God. God is not interested in bringing you kicking and screaming into his fullness of life. He is gentle, persistent, steadfast, hopeful.
Like the prodigal father, he will let you go if you insist.
As with the rich young ruler, he will you grieve when you refuse.
God is the consummate host, and his kingdom is like a dinner party. “Let my house be filled,” the king says (Luke 14:23). Invitations go out—and excuses are sometimes made.
Too busy. Too preoccupied. Maybe another time.
I thought about the word, invitation, earlier this week, how it completely reframed a certain uncertainty in my own life. I’d been framing the question around sin, wanting to know the certainties of what was and was not right. It was an important question, yes—but I added to it another:
What invitation would I be foolish to miss?
Yours,
Jen
This is a beautiful reframing. He invites us through obedience to beautifully spacious, better life.
Thank you, Jen, for your timely post. Be encouraged. Your words make a difference.