Semantics and the Gospel

Semantics and Human Problems

In 1921, a minor Polish nobleman by the name of Alfred Korzybski wrote a book entitled The Manhood of Humanity. Reacting to the cocktail philosophers of the twenties who described humans as, at best, sophisticated animals, the earnest count concluded that “time binding”—that is, the ability to delay gratification or plan from past experience—marks a uniquely human dimension. The Manhood of Humanity, however, was hardly more than a bubble in the intellectual ferment of its time. Not until Korzybski published his second book, Science and Sanity, did he provide a capital “S” for semantics. In its modest, lower-case form, semantics had long served to identify that branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of signs or symbols. As developed in Korzybski’s Institute of General Semantics, however, the term took on pontifical significance: humans’ ability to symbolize became their basic characteristic, and the manifold failures of civilization were rather briskly subsumed under categories that seemed to suggest that all problems were essentially verbal.

Words as Mere Abstractions

The grandiose tone of Science and Sanity has been muted by decades of strife that appear to deny simple analysis, much less general solution. Yet some of the approaches that Korzybski and his more temperate followers formulated to test the elaborate theories they were propounding have embodied insights so basic that they now seem obvious. That seeming obviousness may be the ultimate intellectual compliment.

One of the fundamental tenets of general semantics, for instance, is that verbal definition is often little more than an exchange of abstractions. A term such as happiness is defined as “a state of well-being”—which is to substitute two difficult words, state and well-being, for the single difficult word happiness. We usually require an experiential definition to break the frustrating chain of verbal equivalents that we link in our attempts to give meaning to what we read or hear. Who needs a definition in words for the happiness that shines in the eyes of the just married? That look is a profound definition of happiness. True religion is not a statement that we should visit the fatherless; rather, it is the act itself. If this point seems too evident to need repeating, we may yet profit by briefly considering a problem inherent in the symbolic process. A word is not the thing it stands for; or, as Hayakawa suggests, a map is not the territory it describes. Yet how lost in the actual wilderness most of us would be without the directions furnished by symbols on a piece of paper. In a very real sense, maps provide substitute experience and become the source of imaginative excursion and vicarious delight. One can draw maps, nevertheless, that have no referent, no correspondence in the real world. If we recognize these maps as fiction, they may heighten and focus our experience in a delightful and instructive manner. If we assume them to be true representations of reality, however, they can be viciously misleading.

Language and Religious Intangibles

In no area of our lives do stronger forces urge us to follow maps divorced from the territory they purport to represent than in the realm of religious experience. The fact that religious maps are not confined to the here and now makes the counterfeit map hard to detect with our usual tools. The gauges by which we measure and evaluate many of the matters that occupy our lives are quite inadequate when brought to bear on the things of the spirit. Who, for example, can measure a “burning within” by using British thermal units? Still, we feel uneasy when we cannot touch our treasure, and we are often tempted to ascribe physical properties to theological concepts. We speak easily of “building a testimony” as if there were material substance and orderly construction caught up in the phrase itself. We fear “losing faith” as if it were a commodity to be misplaced. Perhaps the subtlest danger here is an increasing tendency to stress the tangible and quantitative. We can become preoccupied with numbers, percentages, amounts, and competitive rankings. Counting attendance is so much easier—and neater—than assessing a spiritual experience.

If we can avoid exchanging one abstraction for another in theological definition and use appropriate measures to appraise our spiritual lives, we may be ready to hear what the Prophet Joseph had to say about the relationship between language and faith. In his Seventh Lecture on Faith, Joseph made the following assertion:

It is by words, instead of exerting his physical powers, with which every being works when he works by faith. God said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” Joshua spake and the great lights which God had created stood still. Elijah commanded and the heavens were stayed for three and a half years so that it did not rain. . . . Faith, then, works by words. And with these its mightiest works have been and will be performed.¹

A striking Book of Mormon example of this same idea appears in 3 Nephi. After the multitude has filed by the resurrected Savior to check the wound in his side and the nail prints in his hands and feet, they are convinced that Christ has returned in fulfillment of prophecy. After commending their belief, the Savior says: “More blessed are they who shall believe in your words because that ye shall testify that ye have seen me, and that ye know that I am” (3 Ne. 12:2).

We should feel sobered as we reflect on language’s role in faith. As indicated in Alma 32, a positive experience may provide something close to knowledge and put faith temporarily in abeyance. But believing without the experience, receiving not the “things hoped for” (Heb. 11:1) but only the promise as it is conveyed in words, demonstrates true faith. No wonder the scriptures warn us that we will have to account for every idle word we speak.

Words As Lethal Weapons

The real problem, of course, is that words are not less effective because they are idle or thoughtless. The old nursery rhyme affirming that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is probably less reflective of real life than the following lines from Ecclesiasticus: “The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh, but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones” (Ecclus. 28:17). How easily we turn words into weapons. If I call my neighbor an apostate, I probably have not described him with any precision, but I have clubbed him in casual cruelty. How difficult to defend oneself from such a blow! The fact that my comment has little foundation in objective fact—and may well have stemmed from nothing of greater moment than a differing opinion—is small comfort to the brother who is being verbally flogged.

Language As a Source of Contention

I am equally insensitive when I indulge in theological argument. Despite the Savior’s explicit statement that “contention is not of me, but is of the devil” (3 Ne. 11:29), I may feel justified in contention if I am contending for righteousness. How long some of us take to realize that contending for righteousness is just a subtler form of the temptation. Satan would have us contend for wickedness if he could, but he will settle for having us contentious under any circumstance. We are still working for him whether we realize it or not.

As a teenager who occasionally accompanied the missionaries assigned to our area of southern Oregon, I learned—very painfully—the futility of argument. I was much given to the shabby devices of sophomoric debate, and I was often successful in making those who discussed religion with us feel both ignorant and awkward. But very few asked to be baptized after they had been bested in the disputes I always sought. In my zeal to triumph for the Lord, I was tempted to turn conversion into a contest. I had to grow up, both intellectually and spiritually, before I could understand that an argument is just a socially acceptable fistfight—and rarely so honest. I regret the hours I have spent in the fruitless, and usually graceless, exchange called argument. I especially regret the problem I became to those who might have listened to the gospel if my zeal had not compromised my ability to serve.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me say quickly that I believe meaningful discussion is quite possible. The difference between a discussion and an argument is that in a discussion someone is listening. In an argument, no one is listening: we simply wait for our opponents to shut up so we can stun them with the truth! The best approach to an argument—if we are mature enough to use it—was proposed by psychologist Carl Rogers. He suggested that the probability of destructive argument can be avoided if we agree to summarize our opponent’s position—to our opponent’s satisfaction—before replying to it. This approach forces us to listen. And interesting things happen when we listen to another point of view rather than spending our time and energy trying to counter what we think is being said, what we think was just said, or what we are sure our adversary would say if allowed to do so. If we do not really listen, our destiny is fatally easy: we end up either answering questions that are not asked or grasping people by the lapels and asking questions more akin to accusations than to legitimate requests for information. In convulsive logic, I leap from minor premise to conclusion and never even look for a major premise unless something forces me.

We need not be in an argument, however, to neglect establishing a convincing major premise for the careless conclusions we salt throughout many of our conversations. My offhand comment that Sam obviously is not a very staunch member of the Church because he eats refined sugar and white flour brings conclusion and minor premise into rather weak alliance. But the full import of my remark comes clear only when I consider the single major premise that will fit: Good members of the Church do not eat refined sugar and white flour. If I am honest, I must concede that the 89th section of the Doctrine and Covenants does not provide enough support to instill confidence in my major premise. My conclusion about Sam begins to float a little. I had a thoughtlessly easy time deriding Sam’s commitment to the Church until I made that embarrassing search for my major premise. If I am sensitive enough to profit from my experience, I can see how difficult most premises are to establish. What is involved in a phrase such as “good member”? How modest we become when we begin by considering how subjective most of our judgments are.

I remember giving a devotional speech at BYU some years ago, and as I came back from the auditorium I walked by an office in which two colleagues were discussing my talk. They were speaking loudly enough that I had no difficulty hearing one say, “You know, I’m afraid Bob Thomas is so orthodox that he doesn’t even get up in the morning until someone in authority tells him to arise.” I sighed a little and walked on. Farther down the hall, I heard another member of my department say, “I’m afraid Bob is getting farther away from the Church every day.” I walked on with my head down. Would it have helped if I had burst into either room and demanded, “What do you mean?” I think not. At best our conversation would have become a fencing match. Some years ago, President Harold B. Lee came to BYU and discussed this very problem. He was disheartened to hear people excommunicating one another from the Church by the terms they used to describe those with whom they disagreed.

The Role of Language in Creating Attitudes

When my wife and I went to New York to attend Columbia, we became house parents in the “Woodycrest Home for the Friendless” in the Bronx. This job appeared to be an excellent way to support ourselves in graduate school. We were assigned to supervise a group of small boys, whose ages ran between 10 and 13. The situation appeared almost ideal until the head of the organization took us to the little area that we would be responsible for, and I saw how the boys were acting. He watched them a moment and then turned to me and said that the late houseparents over this group had thought of their charges as young hoodlums. As a consequence, the couple had stressed physical—and often brutal—correction. The supervisor went on to say that an earlier couple had avoided this hopelessly narrow approach but had done little better in thinking of the boys as being deprived or disadvantaged. While this last description demanded a little more sensitivity, it was still essentially negative, for if we believed our youngsters were lacking in one sense or another, we could more easily justify any failure to take positive actions in their behalf. After making this point, the supervisor suggested we think of ways in which we might help these “disturbed” children. From many years of experience, the supervisor knew that the word I chose to describe my charges would lead in one of two possible directions: either the opportunity to think freshly and creatively or the disposition to be satisfied with an attitude that was predisposed to failure.

As we teach young people in Church settings, we need to understand the extent to which our attitude toward the class is determined by the words we use in thinking about that class. For instance, Johnny obviously disrupts the entire group. How briskly we decide that this is a punitive situation, that our answer to Johnny’s unacceptable conduct is immediate chastisement. But perhaps the word, and the implied attitude which accompanies it, should not be punish. If we think freshly about the class, perhaps freshly about Johnny, we may find that we need to use him, interest him, or simply acknowledge him. Yet how easily we often decide on overt punishment. He’s disruptive; therefore (those frightening “therefores”), he needs forceful correction.

This problem of labeling reminds me of the old days when families with both members and nonmembers were known as “split families.” If such a home was not having trouble when it was first described in these words, by the time family members heard themselves described in such terms over and over again, they tended to fit the role given them. The term “split families” succeeded in making many difficult situations impossible. Next we tried “part-member,” but that wasn’t much better. Now we speak of “nonmember” families. If we smile a little at the deliberately innocuous, we need to remember that attitudes are established by the words we say, the symbols we think with.

Religious Symbols as Generators of Confused Thinking

Some symbols—particularly religious ones—can generate hopeless confusion when we use them to probe beyond what the Lord has revealed. One reason we are told to avoid the mysteries is simply that the words we must use to speculate with are not precise enough tools to use profitably. Consider a notorious example: If God is perfect, how can he progress? How many of us have wasted time on that one? I am ashamed to admit that I have. I finally realized, however, that I had no idea what perfect meant to the Lord. For that matter, I had no idea what it meant to anyone. Since perfect is an absolute term, it cannot be defined experientially. I can say the word, but I have difficulty giving it anything but poetic meaning. I never thought of this problem, however, in the salad days of my youth. I simply took perfect and confronted it with progress to produce a logical contradiction. I finally caught on that I had no more idea concerning the Lord’s “progress” than I had about trying to fathom his perfection. My childish speculations were no more than linguistic shenanigans.

Perhaps I can take some shamefaced comfort in remembering that Job built a similar trap and promptly caught himself in it. Do you recall how distressed he was to think that someone of his righteous reputation had to suffer so sorely? He pleads with the Lord to come down and tell him, as one man to another, what his sin is and why the righteous suffer. In jarring argument, he counters the answers of his comforters and spurns the genuinely perceptive insights of the young man Elihu, who tried to help him recognize his pride. Finally, the Lord appears to him in a whirlwind—which is an appropriate symbol for the confused state Job has manufactured for himself. In a truly stunning question, the Lord asks Job: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Then he proceeds to ask Job a few questions that clarify the extent of Job’s ignorance. Job does not understand the questions and is now ready to concede that he may have been presumptuous in assuming that he was prepared to understand the nature of suffering. The situation is as if the Lord had said, “Job, you have asked a question that cannot be answered if you don’t know calculus. Let’s try your arithmetic and see if you can even follow an explanation if I give it to you.”

We expect so much from language, and it is deceptively easy to assume that we fully understand the words which we use. More often than not, as we attempt to speculate, we simply “darken counsel by words without knowledge.” Can the Lord be perfect and yet progress? Job-like, I finally know enough to “lay mine hand upon my mouth” (Job 40:4).

The Role of Language in Communicating Feelings

Of language’s many glories, one that many people have not adequately appreciated is its affective role—the extent to which language conveys and gauges feeling. From time to time, I hear Church members complain that sacrament or testimony meetings are boring. They usually go on to say that they are tired of hearing the same old thing. When I hear this complaint, I am tempted to ask if these people are tired of hearing their spouse say “I love you.” That statement is the same old thing, but it can be infinitely fresh and appealing. Similarly, the simple truths of the gospel are boring only to those who have not grown since the last time they heard a comparable talk. Even if it is the identical reading of a favorite Richard L. Evans sermonette, it will not be the same to anyone who brings the fresh perspective of a deepened relationship with the Lord—which is always available to the repentant. To say that a meeting is boring is not perceptive criticism; it is abject confession. We are admitting that we did not choose to bring enough to the gathering to make it significant. Perhaps the speakers were unprepared. That simply enhances the challenge. As Emerson has suggested, though things are “foolishly spoken, they may be wisely heard.”

Perhaps we lay so much stress on language’s role as an information carrier that we wholly fail to appreciate its non-informational function. Ritualistic language rarely emphasizes information, yet the stabilizing, inspiring influence of words that invoke commitment and rededication is immensely important. The loved, traditional words of our sacrament prayers survive mispronunciation and apathetic reading to set the context for fostering a true spirit of worship. Repetition may blur conscious recall of the covenant to which we are ascribing, but the very sound of that which is so deeply a part of our religious experience provides identification with those who share the sacred emblems of the Lord’s supper, and in that sharing we make implicit resolve.

Not the least of the uses to which the language of theology and religion may be put is reaching one another in terms that rise above literal meaning. In particular, testimony meeting allows common sentiments to carry highly personal communication that makes effective use of ritualistic patterns. That which is so sacred as to be almost unspeakable can employ the usual language of testimony bearing to frame and channel a deeply individual outpouring and invest repeated words with transcendent significance.

How much is often packed into the word know as we testify of our convictions! To those who claim that one cannot really know the gospel is true—that we can believe but hardly know in the same sense that we know the results of a laboratory experiment—I would agree. But I must insist that laboratory knowing is relative, no more than an assertion of probability. In contrast, religious knowing—that burning within the bosom—is not subject to statistics. I am a unique witness, and I use the word know in the profoundest sense I can conceive when I say I know the gospel is true.

The Ultimate Word

May I conclude with a brief discussion of how we might read the scriptures more effectively. I was a member of a high council once in which there was a conscious—perhaps even self-conscious—effort to read the scriptures daily. One man suggested that we all read just after getting into bed each night. While the consistency that such an attempt promised was admirable, much of the suggestion’s force was lost when the man finished his comment by declaring that he read himself to sleep on the scriptures every night!

This particular high councilor may have engaged in dutiful page turning, but probably not in very effective reading. When I inquired as to whether or not he used a bookmark, he was obviously surprised and said of course he did. Otherwise, he said, he would not know where he had stopped. I could not quite bear to suggest that he had really stopped reading at the point that the material ceased to claim his full attention. Perhaps he had never really started. When we read the scriptures, we should stay conscious of our need to recognize where we are stopping without the crutch of a bookmark. As we return to them, we should not try to remember where we were in terms of page numbers or chapter reading. Instead, we should start with the last material we clearly remember; that which we clearly remember is that which we have obviously thought about as well as perused. In a devastating aside, Brigham Young taught that if you love the gospel, you can remember it.² How that little truism strikes at the carelessness with which I read! Do I simply “go through” that which I seem to read, or do I truly and fully expose myself to that vicarious manifestation of the Lord that is his scripture?

“In the beginning was the Word,” we are told, “and the Word was with God” (John 1:1). If we too would prepare for his presence, we must accept and live by “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).