What has happened to our ability to write, to read, to appreciate the beauty and mystery of words?
In Eugene Peterson’s book Answering God, he discusses three forms of language — language that informs, language that moves to action, and language that expresses love. In our increased hastiness and pressure to be productive, we’ve increased our facility with informing and motivating/manipulating language while using language less and less to express love.
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson is a wonderful language lover and Inklings scholar, having immersed herself deeply over a lifetime in the words of George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. So, I take her words in the accompanying post as a wake up call. For if we humiliate the words we use by paying little attention to them, we just might become contemptuous of the Word made flesh.
You can find her excellent post here: https://everydaytheology.life/2016/03/24/deliver-us-from-atrophy/