Ciao amici miei!
Oops, sorry. You probably don’t understand that, do you? It just says “Hi my friends” in Italian.
I’ve been trying to bump up my Italian studies because Gary gave me one of my boots for Christmas. It was a cute way of announcing that he’d like to give me the trip to Italy that I’ve been talking about for years.
I love languages. I studied Spanish in high school and college, including my junior year spent in Madrid, Spain.
I’m the person who asks, “What language do you speak?” when I hear someone speaking a language I don’t know at a theme park, in a store, or anywhere, really.
I know a smidgen of German, a few words in Japanese, and quite a bit in French, but Italian is the one I’m working hard on right now.
Maybe you don’t like languages as much as I do, but I bet some of you speak a foreign language.
You don’t think so? Even if it’s English, many hobbies and professions use words that don’t make sense to the rest of us.
Sewing: baste, clip, notch, staystitch, seam allowance, bias, selvage, crossgrain
Carpentry: dovetails, grain, header, kickback, miter, plumb, rise, valley, butt joint
Bankers: accretion, arbitrage, ABS, ISA, RPI, AER, FDIC (wow, lots of acronyms!)
Even Christianity can seem like a different language if you are new to it: saved, sanctification, justification, salvation, redemption, born again, omniscient, righteous, iniquity, repentance…
We need to be aware of the languages we’re learning and the languages we’re speaking.
If we decide to get into a new hobby or profession, we learn the language. We read about it and talk to others who know more, and we learn. It may take years before we’re “fluent” in all of the special words there are to know.
When we become a Christian, we read the Bible and listen to sermons and talk to other Christians so we “learn the language.” But we also need to be sensitive to those around us who don’t know that language.
Throwing around words like justification and righteousness will just frustrate and confuse friends and acquaintances who have no idea what we’re talking about. We need to start with simple ideas in plain English.
When people learn a foreign language, they normally start with the simple things: Hi, How are you?, My name is George, I live in New York, Where are you from?
From there, they keep adding vocabulary and grammatical constructions until they can converse at a deeper level.
Let’s keep that in mind with our “faith talk” as well. Meet people where they’re at and speak at their level, then keep adding little bits and pieces as they’re ready for them.
Let’s keep it relevant, too. When I’m practicing Italian, one sentence pops up every once in a while in Duolingo: Il ragno ‘e sotto il formaggio.
I understand it perfectly now, but I hope I never have to say it in Italy. It means: The spider is under the cheese. Yeah, that’s not relevant. And if it is, then our trip to Italy should be very interesting.
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Corinthians 13:1 NIV)
Do you speak any foreign languages? How about “Christianese”? How can focusing on God help you to be sensitive as you talk to others about your faith?