Lux Lucet

For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (Matt.12:37).

Pronouns.  They don’t look like much.  Small words, one or two syllables.  In general, they’re not very noticeable.  Most of us don’t think twice about the pronouns we use.  And yet despite their generally unimpressive appearance, the pronouns we use are freighted with meaning.

Take one example from the New Testament.  In the Greek text, the masculine pronoun “he” is consistently used to refer to the Holy Spirit.  This is surprising, for in Greek, the word for spirit, “pneuma, ” is grammatically neuter.  This would lead us to expect the Greek to use a neuter pronoun when referring to spirit.  But the fact that the New Testament writers never refer to the Holy Spirit as an “it” but always as a “he” is strong evidence that the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force.

A more modern example is the current battle over the third person English pronoun.  Historically, English has used “he” to refer to a generic individual in the third person.  But in recent times this has changed.

Take for instance the following sentence found in a training manual I’m reading for work,

In a 401(k) arrangement, an employees election to defer compensation into the plan has a direct effect on his or her current compensation:  the employee is giving up a right to receive a portion of his or her current cash compensation in exchange for a plan contribution to be made for his or her benefit in the form of an elective deferral (emphasis added).

The manual from which this quote is taken is has about 800 pages, and nearly every single one of them contains a clunker of a sentence like the one above.  Every single time the text requires a singular generic pronoun, the author and editor have elected to use him or her.  It is painful to read.

Linguistic butchery is by no means limited to training manuals.  It’s standard practice in all modern text books as well.  The following sentence is from a strategy text book used in one of my business school classes,

Mutual adjustment works best where the individuals involved are well-informed of the actions of their coworkers, either because they are in close visual contact (a chef de cuisine and her sous-chefs)…

Rather than using his or her, this writer prefers to go with a standalone generic feminine pronoun to solve the existing “problem” of the English third person.  Other writers have taken to using abominations such as “(s)he,” “s/he.”

But apart from producing clunky English, writers who see a need to solve the “problem” of the generic third person masculine pronoun are doing something much worse.  They are signaling their basic agreement with feminism, among the most destructive, dehumanizing, and antichristian philosophies ever foisted on any people.  This, much more than mere stylistic infelicities, is the real rub with English as it is currently used in official publications.  Rare is the contemporary writer with the courage to buck this trend.

And it is not just feminism that seeks to remake the English language after its own distorted view of reality.  The Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) community has successfully pushed for its own brand of linguistic propaganda.

When newspapers and other media use the pronoun “she” to refer to someone who is obviously male, whether they intend to or not, they communicate to the audience their acceptance of the whole LGBT system of thought.  They are saying, in effect, that there really are transgenders (e.g. women who are trapped in men’s bodies) and  that society should accept this as fact.  And what is more, any unhappiness felt by said transgenders is not the fault of their own sinful confusion, but rather society in general and Christianity in particular.

What’s in a pronoun?  Quite a lot it would seem. Never is error so difficult to identify as when it is rooted in language.  And linguistic propagandists have long been hard at work spreading their errors by the subtle alteration of our vocabulary.  It’s hard to think in proper terms when the words to express those thoughts no longer exist or have become socially unacceptable.  Who would have thought one could witness for Christ and strike a blow against the rulers of this world by the simple refusal to use their propagandistic pronouns?  It just may be that a few little words shall fell them.