Christ is Lord of the Dictionary

Much of this reflection is the product of listening to the cultural reflections of a certain pastor in Moscow, Idaho who the New York Times thinks is “more like a lumberjack than a pastor, even when he wears a suit”.

You might’ve heard such statements before as ‘Christ is the King of Kings’ and ‘Christ is the Lord of Lords’, which would make this rather humble claim about dictionary dominance seem given, or at least uncontroversial. However, anyone who is familiar with their ‘HR department’ or who has a television or access to the news has already seen the cultural phenomenon that stands to challenge our titular assertion.

It seems that every week, the general populace are being so politely asked to use the new meaning or new terminology for a given social or cultural issue. Racism used to mean bearing prejudice against another person on the basis of their race, but now we are asked to define it as prejudice + power, absolving the racism of any so-called oppressed class, whatever the university professors meant by that, and whatever Marx meant by it in the first place.

However, whether we are being asked to consider a redefinition of what it means to be ‘male’, ‘female’, ‘married’, ‘a legal voter’, ‘a pastor’, etc, the real battle is not for the definition per se, but for the right to make definitions.

The first time that a woman seized the right to make definitions, and offered the same to her husband, the world fell into sin (Gen 3:6-7). It is this very desire, to know and define good and evil, black and white, justice and injustice, racism and fairness, marriage and abomination, that companies and institutions and politicians and activists are attempting to seize.

Satan challenged the definitions in Eden, saying ‘did God actually say?’ and ‘you will not surely die’. Adam fell for it, but Jesus didn’t. “He answered, it is written”.

Because Christ is Lord, he has the right to determine and decree all that is, and because Christians are people of the truth (1 John 1:5-7), we have the responsibility not to lie about the world around us. It is our Father’s world, and the truth and reality of it honours him. When we call a person that was born with XY chromosomes a man, we are honouring God and confessing the truth about reality:

So God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

To knowingly call an XY person anything other than a man, is to lie, and is to fundamentally say to God, ‘I know better than you’.

The same thing is happening when the state attempts to create a new definition for marriage. God has created marriage, it is a reality of creation in the same way that the passage of the seasons is a reality of creation. The state can decree that Autumn should now follow Winter or Spring, and in fact all the people of the Earth could sign off in agreement, but those leaves would only turn their glorious shades of orange and red one season a year, a season that God created and called Autumn.

Our states have not changed the definition of male and female, or of marriage. Just because two men can point to their ‘wedding’ bands and show you photos of standing in a church, probably in front of an Episcopalian or Uniting minister, does not mean they are married. Truth belongs to our God. “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice, the Earth melts.” (Ps 46:6).

Shema, O Christian, The Lord your God is Lord over definitions. It is a matter of loyalty to your king that you speak the truth about the world around you, and confess boldly that Christ, not Merriam-Webster, has the final say.