Word watching 4 Generation X

The term Generation X began as a more general term in the 1950s and was then used as the title of a 1964 sociological study by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson. For a number of years now it has been used to refer to young adults born somewhere between 1965 and 1985. Generation X: Tales for an accelerated culture by Canadian Douglas Coupland appeared in 1991 and gave currency to the term.

What 'X' stands for is debatable. One writer speaks of Xers as a lost generation, becoming adults at the end of a century characterised by economic boom and bust, punctuated by world wars. With high unemployment, easy access to various entertainments, including computers, alcohol, drugs and recreational sex, Xers are often seen to be lacking motivation and unwilling to take on responsibility. The word slacker (as in Richard Linklater’s 1991 film Slackers) has also been used to refer to an apparently lack lustre generation.

Their parents, The baby boomers (c 1945-1965), it is said, were raised in church then left. Baby busters, as Xers are often called, have no Christian base whatsoever. Modernists believed progress was inevitable and were generally optimistic but have given way to postmodernists, who despise rationality and are often pessimistic. Dieter Zander once designated them the me generation and we generation. Boomers lived to work, Busters work to live; Boomers desired strong institutions, Busters strong relationships.

AIDS, the effects of divorce, single parenthood, both parents working and so-called ‘blended families’, rebellion against authority, cynicism and loathing for hypocrisy are other traits often noted. Bruce Tulgan has made his name writing about Generation X. He highlights disloyalty, arrogance, short attention span, unwillingness to pay ones dues and the demand for instant gratification. He argues, however, that these are due to growing up experiencing the effects of redundancy, broken homes, information overload and a fast changing world. He argues that these traits have a positive side. Speeches about ‘in my day’ cut no ice, says Tulgan, but Xers do look for mentors who can give what cannot be learned from other sources. Be willing to give them the ‘remote control’ and let them sift through what is on offer. Their apparent laziness is often more a matter of keeping plenty of personal time free, preferring relationships over achievement. ‘Busters have grown up watching the Boomers excel at their jobs and not excel at their homes’ (Zander). There is plenty of evidence of willingness to work hard given the right situation. Others have spoken positively too of a more balanced work ethic – happiness is more important than money; a rediscovery of the individual; enterprise; high social responsibility and high consumer savvy.

Zander has spoken of Generation X’s pain, postmodern mindset, fear, grassroots orientation and spiritual hunger. Perhaps this latter characteristic is the most encouraging. Zander quotes the striking statement in Coupland’s later book Life after God, ‘My secret is that I need God. That I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give because I no longer seem to be capable of giving. To help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness. To help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love’. Many have noted, with Chris Seay, what he said in an article called Pastor X ‘They’re open to the God thing, but they’re not into the church thing’.

Therefore Zander has a point when he suggests that in communicating with such people we need to be real (they want to know the bottom line and prefer honesty over politeness, says Andres Tapia), rousing, relevant and relational (talked with not at). Tapia, similarly, says Busters look for authenticity (tired of broken promises and commitments, they want honesty, sincerity and the truth), community (Xers often grew up surrounded by people but unable to connect with anyone.), lack of dogmatism, a focus on the arts and diversity. We cannot deny the truth but we can present it in ways that will win people. The preference of many for discussion groups over traditional sermons must be recognised how ever we respond. Racial, economic and ethnic diversity in our churches is an asset.

As Charlene Solomon argues no generation is monolithic, however there are significant ways in which one generation differs from a previous ones and we are wise to bear this in mind in regard to Generation X and the rising Generations Y and Z. If she is right that Xers dislike hearing about the past, inflexibility about time, workaholism, being scrutinised, disrespect, pressure to convert to traditionalist behaviour, disparaging comments about their generation’s tastes and styles, surely we are wise to take that on board.

Word watching 3 Abortuary

If you are concerned at the high number of abortions that take place in this country and elsewhere you will immediately recognise the point being made in the term ‘abortuary’. Coined in the late 1980s the term is used to refer to an abortion clinic and amalgamates the words abort and mortuary. The purpose is to emphasise that every time an abortion is performed a death results. As much as any mortuary, an abortion clinic is a place of death. Unlike a mortuary, however, the deaths of babies in abortion clinics are all preventable.

An anti-abortion or pro-life group called the Prolife action league is much in favour of this sort of emotive language. In a series of 99 things you can do about abortion they include use of ‘inflammatory rhetoric’. Most of the language they have in mind would only be ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ to pro-abortionists. For example, ‘baby’ rather than foetus, foetal tissue or the outrageous POC (‘product of conception’) and ‘mother’ rather than ‘killing a baby’ rather than ‘pregnant woman’ or ‘interrupting a pregnancy’. Some doctors object to being known as abortionists. American doctor, Robert Tamis, is an example named by another organisation. He wants to be known as a ‘fertility specialist’ but what many women who seek his help do not realise is that, despite his efforts to help them conceive at other times in the week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays he kills approximately 20 babies a morning.

Christians are well used to this reticence. Many have a distaste for terms like fornication or adultery and prefer ‘pre-marital sex’ or ‘having an affair’. Perhaps terms like ‘pro-life’ and ‘abortuary’ are inflammatory. The Pro-life action league recognises that constant use of such terms can be counter-productive. Nevertheless such terms can be useful in shocking people into realising what is going on.

Other terms for abortion clinics include ‘Death camp’ and ‘Abortion mill’. The word ‘holocaust’ has often been applied to the whole sorry spectacle of mass death that characterises the 20th century abortion industry. Such terms emphasise that just as under Hitler a mechanistic, conveyor belt approach to death existed, so, perhaps for the first time in history, abortionists take the same cold, ruthless line with unwanted babies today.

We cannot condone attacks on abortionists and abortion clinics and we may see little point in ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ but we cannot close our eyes to what is going on. Every day in cardboard boxes marked ‘Medical Services - Regulated Medical Waste’ or something similar, mangled, bloody bodies and torn limbs from tiny babies are taken across town to be incinerated. Can we have any sympathy at all for a man like Henry Morgentaler who alone has been personally responsible for some 100,000 abortions in Canada, a man who once said on a radio talk show ‘I’m quite proud of this accomplishment ... This is my calling in life, it’s my art … I should be given a medal for the compassionate service I have performed for women in this country’!? In 2008 he was indeed given the Order of Canada 'for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist and civil liberties organizations.' A number of members of the order withdrew in protest.

Our sympathies are with them and the American Joe Scheidler who wrote, ‘We live in a sick nation whose highest court legalised child murder, whose medical profession commits the carnage, whose government approves of it, whose legal system defends it, whose legislatures pass laws to protect it … and whose journalists have consistently conducted a program of silence and misinformation regarding this holocaust known as legal abortion.’

Word watching 2 Pagan

Few readers can be unaware of the resurgence in recent years of paganism. The emergence of the Pagan Police Association demanding time off for pagan holidays has highlighted the fact. Consciously and unconsciously, men and women are seeking to fill the spiritual vacuum created by the general abandonment of Christianity with the old pagan beliefs once rejected by so many. If John Bunyan were writing his Pilgrim’s Progress today he might not write, as he did, of a cave where “two giants, Pope and Pagan, dwelt in old time; by whose power and tyranny” men “were cruelly put to death” nor that “Pagan has been dead many a day”. He might have something else to say about Pope too, but that is another matter.

Of course, many are using the word paganism in a technical sense – as referring to a vaguely definable nature religion. However, the word is often used more loosely in at least three other ways.

1. To describe religion outside Judaism before the coming of Christ.

2. To describe the religion of those who have heard the gospel and rejected it.

3. To describe the religion of those who have never heard the gospel.

The word itself has an interesting etymology. It comes directly from Latin and orginally meant rustic or peasant, a word that itself has the same roots. Both are ultimately from a word pagus, which referred to a rural district or to the countryside in general. That word itself is probably from pangere to fix, as in fixing a landmark to define an area or, possibly, from a Greek word in the Doric dialect referring to a fountain, as found in every village.

Pagans, then, could be villagers, or sometimes civilians as opposed to the military. Because Christianity first made its mark in the cities and towns, the main urban centres of the Roman Empire, it tended to be peasants, rural folk, country bumpkins we might say, who were the most likely not to have heard of Christ or to be unbelievers. From as early as AD 365 this secondary meaning of pagan began to be used. In his Decline and fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon says ‘Christianity gradually filled the cities of the empire: the old religion … retired and languished in obscure villages; and the word pagans, with its new signification, reverted to its primitive origin.’

Gibbon states that an important element in the rise of the word is that early believers dubbed those not in Christ’s army as ‘Civilians’ or Pagans as they had not taken the sacrament of baptism.

The word heathen, a Germanic word, seems to have similar roots. The dwellers on the heaths away from the towns were later again the slowest to accept the gospel. In the Middle English work Piers Plowman there is an explanation ‘Hethene is to mene after heth, And untiled earth’. It is fair to say that this explanation is disputed.

In Scripture there is no exact equivalent of these words. Rather words for the nations and for the Gentiles take on the meaning of heathen or pagan at times leading some translations to use such words. In Old Testament days the straight choice really was between the true God and the gods of the nations or pagans. Today we discriminate between nominal Christianity, Islam, Judaism and may be more, confining the word pagan to animistic beliefs, but the word also serves as a useful catch-all term for non-Christians found, sadly, both in rural and urban areas.

Word watching 1 Wicked

I recently came across some articles I did for Grace magazine a few years ago on words. I thought I might brush them up and place them here and may be even try my hand at some more.

The word wicked appears many times in our English Bibles. It translates a range of Hebrew words in the Old Testament and three or four Greek words in the New Testament. It will not surprise you to learn that in every case the words have negative connotations.

The word wicked was probably a dialect word before the 13th century and finds its roots in the once forgotten Old English word, Wicca. The latter is the male form of Wicce from which (!) our word witch comes. Thus wicked originally meant bewitched. It has an affinity to the word cursed in that way. It came to refer to anything evil, depraved or corrupt and that is how most people understand it today. The witchcraft element has been all but completely forgotten.

It is a common word and this has led to a weakening of its power as an adjective. However, in the last twenty years or so it has been further weakened in the UK by the introduction of a slang usage, documented in most newer dictionaries, where the word has a positive and complimentary tone. (In New England it simply means extremely, really or very, context deciding whether very good or bad). Most of us are aware of this by now and those who work with young people have long learned to take care. Preachers also need to remember the alternative meaning as although young people know both meanings they often find it difficult to disassociate the word from its positive sense. The preacher who says ‘We are all wicked’ is in danger of giving the impression, at least to some, that he is praising the congregation rather than condemning it.

It is generally accepted that the slang usage began as ‘Jive talk’ popular among mainly African American jazz musicians in the middle of this century. They would speak, for example, of a ‘Wicked horn player’ meaning a saxophonist of great dexterity. Etymologically that parallels an older more mainstream expression wizard, as in ‘He’s a wizard on the keyboards’. This rich expression suggests initiation into an occult though not necessarily evil world where he has gained mastery of his instrument. It is more likely, however, that the use of wicked and similarly bad (‘This is a really bad tune’) as positive terms grew out of the abuse often heaped on jazz musicians, especially people of colour. If jazz music is held to be wicked music then, by definition, the better the music to the ears of those who appreciate it then the more bad or wicked to those that do not.

From the world of jive talk to that of popular music is a short step. The late Michael Jackson’s 1987 album Bad sold millions. Of course, the double meaning of the word is important here and has been exploited by many others. It is at this point that Isaiah 5:20 is most relevant, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. The word passed to the other electronic media, most notably the world of football commentating. A wicked left foot is one that harms opponents in regard to their chances of winning but that is most desirable from the other team’s point of view. From here the word has passed into general usage in youth culture and beyond.

If there is a Satanic plot afoot here our enemy still has a long way to go. If he does succeed it will not be the first time. The word silly once meant holy! We have coped with that change and as long as we are aware of what is going on there is no reason why we should not be able to cope with this one either.