I am now in Seminary. Yes. Becoming a Pastor if you can believe it. I love my studies and find many of the assignments inspiring. I thought you might like them too. Here is one, the subject was Poetry and Faith Language, we were encouraged to speak about our lives, the book referenced is "Growing in the Life of Faith" by Craig Dykstra:

Dykstra’s first reason for the fact that we do not teach this poetic faith language is that we do not know it ourselves.

I agree. I can’t say that I know it but I do want to learn. Lately I have become convinced of its necessity: only with poetry can we publicly express life’s difficulties, which must be addressed, without either glorifying evil or giving voice to it and defiling many.

I recently heard of a eulogy given about a man who had been very difficult for his family; he was a professing Christian and had given much to Missions. The Pastor described life to his wounded adult children as: “often turbulent yet also glorious.” The simplicity of it struck me in its beauty: she had addressed the adult children’s difficulties with their father now deceased without spelling out in horrid graphic detail, verbally abusing everyone in the room, just how dysfunctional the family had become.

The second reason I found in the passage involves a fear many of us have of what Dykstra describes as “authoritarian language.”

Here I need to tell you that I came to know the Lord in a drug infested party. My christian friend did not use authoritarian language in sharing the Gospel. I heard the story of Adam and Eve in the garden and ‘caught’ the problem; can’t say I understood but I knew my overwhelming sense of being marred and dirty inside was real and that I shared that condition with Adam and Eve, which was comforting in a way, I wasn’t alone and they were in the Bible, a book I knew culturally as being of the utmost importance.  I did not know the word sin but the conviction of it was so strong that day as my eyes were opened to see Jesus' Beauty, His Holiness and His love. The power of God changed me forever. My friend never judged me, never condemned me, but simply shared from the scripture the story of the Gospel and of God’s Love. I cannot explain it. It must have had to do with God’s time for me. Maybe waiting for God’s time for people would save us much harsh language.

Many years in church though did teach me religious jargon even some of the ‘us versus them’ language Dykstra mentions, which I thankfully had to unlearn in order to minister in jails and prisons, mostly to young people in their 20’s who were all themselves victims of abuse but who were nevertheless made in the image of God.

I had to learn how to say it in English, not “theologizing” or using religious idioms that are at best incomprehensible to the uninitiated and at worst, off-putting, I learned to avoid the black and white pronunciations that do not communicate God’s searching Love. Proclamations and affirmations and even explanations yes, judgement and condemnation no!

But lately, as I mentioned, I have wanted to learn a more poetic faith language, calling the people I have been drawn together with up, helping them lift their eyes and focus on God and His faith rather than on our troubles. For that reason, I did appreciate the Nairobi Statement and am mulling on its language.

Poetic language is undoubtedly one of the reasons I still love the KJV. An unforgettable (to me) example of it is when the Scripture describes what must have been a terrifying prospect at the Red Sea for a bewildered group of slaves who had no idea, as we do now in awed albeit easy retrospect, that those waters would actually and miraculously part and that after a harrowing crossing with the enemy in hot pursuit, this band of people would finally and forever be delivered from their slave past:

“And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.”(Ex. 14:13)