You need a Grammar to Commuicate....

I will be the first to confess that grammar was never my favorite subject. In fact, I I never really learned English grammar until I took Latin in Grade 10. However, we will leave that pedagogical tangent as a diversion to pick up on another day.

What prompts this entry are two books I enjoyed over my recent vacation. Christian Smith and Patricia Snell wrote a fascinating (and frankly, disconcerting and alarming) book on the spirituality of today's 18-23 year olds entitled Souls in Transition: The Religions and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. I also read A. J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest of Living as Biblically as Possible.

Jacobs is a secular Jew who reads the Bible and attempts to live according to its' instruction as literally as possible for an entire year. His book is effectively an annotated journal of his experience. While parts of the book will seem blasphemous to some, I did find it insightful and helpful in understanding how someone without any religious background (Jacobs admits that he was a virtual biblical illiterate before commencing on this project) might understand the teachings of the scripture, reading them on face value for the first time. While I profoundly disagree with much of what Jacobs has written, I realized as I read him how many assumptions (rightful and biblical assumptions, but assumptions none-the-less) assisted me in making sense of the Scriptures which I have grown up with from my youth. Sunday school and catechism classes were more important in shaping my understanding of the scriptures than I ever realized.

Christian Smith and Patricia Snell in their book highlight how evangelical young people are practical illiterates in terms of their biblical knowledge. "Articulacy fosters reality. A major challenge for religious educators of youth, therefore, seems to be fostering articulation: helping teens practice talking about their faith, providing practice using vocabularies, grammar, stories, and key messages of faith. Especialy to the extent that the language of faith in American culture is beoming a foreign language, edcucators, like real foreign language teachers, have that much more to work at helping their sutdents learn to pracice speaking that other language of faith."

Without a common grammar,we right words use can but confusing so much ends up giving up that we end up because. The confusion of the previous sentence is illustrative of what happens when we end up as practical biblical illiterates -- we do not have the grammar to effectively communicate, either within the community of faith nor in the broader community. Reading both of these books over the past few weeks -- one by reminding me of how challenging it is for an unbeliever to really understand the message of the gospel, even if he is intelligent but is approaching the scriptures simply as another piece of literature, and another by recounting the ignorance of those who have been raised in a Christian tradition but are, for practical purposes, biblical illiterates -- speaks to the importance of developing a biblical grammar in order both to understand for ourselves and to communicate to others, the essence of the biblical message.