on choosing our words wisely.

A few weeks ago I wrote a paper for my linguistics class on Christianese.

Christianese is the jargon (“specialized language”) used by Christians. I’m sure you’re all somewhat familiar with it, even if you don’t realize it. Some examples would be to ask someone if they are “saved,” to talk about your “missional community,” or to tell someone that what they said in Bible study was a “good word.” I know this is an interesting topic to a lot of people, considering that my post on sh*t Christian girls say is one of my most popular posts ever.

I’m totally down for speaking in Christianese, to some extent. In fact, you can read some past blog entries of mine where I talk about being “blessed,” “the Lord,” or “bringing Kingdom.” I’m not saying it’s all bad. I am saying, however, that I made some disconcerting observations throughout my research for this paper.

In general, I found that the defining characteristic of Christianese is indirectness. Euphemisms abound (the enemy instead of Satan, struggles instead of sins, Harvest Festival instead of Halloween…), as well as justifying statements and avoidance. I’ve heard people say that the Lord told them to do something (which they may well believe), but I think it can also be abused to justify behavior that is called into question. Again, I know there are people who are genuine, but I think we (myself included!!) need to be careful about what we attribute to God or to Scripture. Another one I found was that someone might say that something is not their calling to avoid doing something (“I just don’t really have a heart for the poor…that’s not my calling!”). Or they might tell someone, “I’ll pray for you” instead of lending a hand of practical help.

I chose this topic because it was interesting and familiar to me. I never thought, however, that it would become so personally impactful. Throughout the weeks that I was working on the paper, my senses were heightened to my own usage of Christianese as well as others. Not only Christianese, though, I was more aware of all the words that I used in general. I started analyzing how I talked, why I talked, what I said, the impact that it had on others…and sometimes it was scary. The Bible talks a lot about the power of words, and I was reminded of that all over again. I want to be completely genuine and to recognize the power of life or death that I carry around with me.

A few people mentioned that they would be interested in reading my paper, and I’m posting it here with a few disclaimers:
1) I wrote this paper from an unbiased view, as a “researcher”, not as a Christian. Therefore, I tried to not insert my opinions or to justify why Christians speak this way. That’s kind of why I wrote this blog, because the paper lead me to some interesting conclusions for Christians, but that wasn’t the audience of my paper, so I didn’t write it there.
2) One of the websites that I cited is called “Baptized in Bull****.” Hope you’re not offended by seeing that word in my paper.
3) The paper is pretty long…fair warning. I wouldn’t be offended if you didn’t read the whole thing.

Without further ado…my Christianese paper!

***

I would love to hear your comments on this subject, so jump right in! See that little comment box just beckoning you to fill it with your thoughts?

summer is for: sisters.

It’s crazy how time flies. Already it feels like summer has been here forever, and it’s so sweet. I finished with one last class on Thursday night, and the next day got to pick up my sister Kay and her fiancé from the airport for a visit.

   

   

The past few days have been spent at the beach and the pool, Disneyland, and yummy restaurants. I’m so happy that I made it to summer! And I’m happy Kay is here. She’s here till Saturday, so we have many more days to enjoy together. Now if only Colby was done for the summer…

dog blog.

It’s been a while since I blogged about Harry and Macy.

Here’s what’s up. For a while, I thought I was becoming a dog person. Then Macy decided that she actually wasn’t housebroken, and I called my mom almost in tears because I wanted to give her away. So…I don’t know. I was disappointed in myself because I really wanted to make Colby proud by becoming a dog person.

The thing is…I kind of feel like a lot of people equate liking dogs with liking children. If you’re nice to dogs and want dogs around then you’ll be nice to children and want children around. I don’t believe this at all. I love kids! And I think I’m going to be a great mom (in like…2 years). So I have to keep telling myself just because I’m not a total dog-lover, it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person. To me, dogs are not on the same level as people.

And just because I’ve realized that I really, truly am not a dog person, it doesn’t mean that I hate my dogs. I actually like my dogs a lot (most of the time). They’re fun, and I take a million pictures of them. Macy sleeps in the best positions and is also learning to drive (along with how to sit, stay, and heel). She’s still basically scared of everything including her own shadow, but she does come out of her shell more and more these days.

   

   

We thought this would be fun..?

Best friends and bike rides.

   

We took them to the pool this weekend…

coldplay at the hollywood bowl.

On Wednesday night, Colby and I drove to Hollywood to see Coldplay, one of the most impressive live acts around.

   

(and it was all yellow…)

   

I saw Coldplay once before, when I was in college. It was so fun to share the experience with Colby!

   

We had a great time…minus the 2.5 hours that it took for us to get to Hollywood. Yikes.

the eating project: month nine.

This is part of our Eating Project. To check out where else we’ve eaten in the past 9 months, click here.

Now that we’ve finally made it out of Africa and on to Asia, I’m a much happier camper.

We spent month nine in a hotel  with air conditioning and internet in the heart of the touristy part of Ho Chi Minh City . It was glorious. I was pretty crazy in love with Colby at that point in time, but still had no idea of our eventual destiny.  The two of us went to a wedding of these random Vietnamese people with one of our ministry contacts. We met a man at the wedding who was a Gideon. He loved that Colby and I were missionaries, and he kept referring to Colby as my husband. I tried to correct him, but it was a lost cause. I guess he was on to something…

(ps: us with the happy couple…the bride is in the pink dress, in case the tiara didn’t tip you off)

Anyways, the food! I loved the food in Saigon! We were able to get a per diem for our food and just eat from street vendors and such. Some highlights were Banh Mi (which is a sandwich of eggs or meat and vegetables on a baguette), smoothies, and this delicious and super cheap pork and rice. Also that month we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. We needed a little American food!

For this month’s adventure we headed over to Little Saigon in Westminster, about 20 minutes from our place.

It really was like a mini-Vietnam, with everything written in Vietnamese, and South Vietnam flags up on every lamp pole. I did think that they would need a ton more power lines to make it look more authentic…Ho Chi Minh was crazy with the cables!

I found out about this restaurant through yelp.com once again. It had really high ratings, so I thought we should just go for it!

   

The atmosphere was nice. It was a super tiny family owned place. The waiter was so friendly! He gave us recommendations off the menu and then throughout the meal kept giving us suggestions for what to dip in which sauce, asking us if we liked it, generally chatting us up. We of course loved it. Colby got fried egg rolls, I got some sort of plate with lots of super delicious chicken, shrimp, and broken rice (“comfort food” as our waiter said), and we got some spring rolls to share.

  

10/10 for presentation, right? Although we did laugh about how the lettuce took up a huge part of Colby’s plate. Everything was so good…especially my food. It’s funny because they are known for their pork spring rolls, and we were definitely a little weirded out be them because they were basically half a hotdog with some cucumber, lettuce, and carrots, wrapped up in rice paper. Not that I didn’t like it, but I just didn’t realize pork meant hotdog. But it must just be the common thing since the restaurant had so many reviews raving about it. I don’t know. Maybe they pulled a fast one on us.

  

All in all, really nice experience. Did I mention our total bill was under 20 dollars? I would definitely come back to get the delicious food that I ate again!