What to leave in what to leave out
By Elizabeth Prata
People accuse Christians of having “blind faith.” They charge Christians of being “dumb” or a “robot”.
This is not so. The Bible is evidential. Evidential is an adjective that means serving as evidence. From Vocabulary.com, we read, “Often used as a legal term, evidential is sometimes paired with the words “proof,” “burden,” or “hearing.””
The Bible has many external and internal proofs that the information contained in it is reliable. Believers know that it’s reliable because it’s from God, who is perfect. It’s the revealing of Himself to humanity, and everything He does is good, therefore the Bible is good.
However, unsaved people are blind to the glories of God. They cannot please God. Their mind is clouded with sin and their foolish hearts are darkened. So they do not believe the Bible as credible, true, or good.
Yet sometimes, a person gets curious about the Bible. They want to know, logically, why so many people find the Bible fascinating. They want to know if it is true, or the things in it are trustworthy. They investigate.
Pause that thought for a minute…
I am a writer, I always have been since I was able to write. I love language…words…phrases. How they sound, their origins, choosing words for my blog writing. It’s fun. I spend a lot of time with words.
When someone posts something on social media, I look at what they wrote, and I comment on it. Recently a woman took issue with something I replied to on a person’s large ministry page. She said I didn’t have the whole context, I didn’t know the story, I didn’t know the person’s heart, all that. Sure, I agree, more context is better than less context, but the point of social media is that someone writes something and publishes it for the world to see, and people in the world who read it, reply based on what they read.
What we respond to are the words the person chose in their published piece. What they put in, and what they leave out. The words they pick, the language the chose, gives insight into a person’s mind.
Here is a Cold Case Detective explaining his profession’s approach to forensic language. His name is J. Warner Wallace. He was unsaved but curious. He was interested in the Bible as an evidential document. It is a true cold case. I bought his book “Forensic Faith” and I’m looking forward to reading it.
Wallace said: “Detectives will have the perpetrator write down everything they did on the day of the murder from the time they woke up to the time they went to bed. I will analyze that looking for deception indicators, how they compress time, how they expand time, how they use pronouns, how they use tenses and verbs. I’m looking for adjectives and adverbs. These are really important. Optional words are really important.”
His story is that he examined the Bible using the same forensic methods he uses in his profession in solving cold cases. He found the Bible to be truly trustworthy. As a side note and a praise, he was saved shortly after that, and is now an apologist for Christ in the faith.
So while we can’t determine everything about a person from reading their words on a screen or on a paper, we can conclude some things. We might not be a cold case forensic detective, but we do have the mind of Christ and our mental faculties can detect word patterns.
Pay attention to the words they use and the words they don’t use. That second one is harder, I agree. Omissions are hard to spot. Oftentimes it takes a pattern of omission to detect something is off. Take Joel Osteen for example. He never uses the words ‘sin’, ‘repent’, or even ‘Jesus’. He will say broken, or messy, or God, but he doesn’t choose the Bible’s power words that convict a soul.
Beth Moore rarely uses the word repent in her speeches or her writing. Oh, she’ll speak or write a verse that has the word repent in it, but she rarely directly calls for repentance from sin. To my knowledge, and I checked this to the best of my ability a year or so ago, she has never taught either in person or a published Bible study, on 1 Timothy. Hmmm. That’s the Bible book that forbids women to teach men or hold authority over them.
Some people have occasionally made remarks on what I’ve written based on a conclusion they’ve come to, and after examining their statement, I’ve found them to be right. i didn’t even know I was revealing myself but they concluded something about me based on the words I use, the topics I write on.
So watch for a pattern of omission, while you are watching for the words they choose to use. Does the Bible teacher use important words like hell, death, wrath, repent, sin, Jesus. Do they overuse words like grace, mercy, forgiveness, without a balance of the other words?
And that is the point. When a person gives a sermon or writes something on social media or on paper, they are choosing words. Words and phrases are important. It is a glimpse of what is in their mind and heart. (Matthew 12:34; Luke 6:45).
What I’ve described is one aspect of discernment.
