The Patriarchy, Cancel Culture, Whiteness, Expressive Individualism—our conversation is full of grand and polemical proper nouns. Inspired by A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories, where words that carry great childish significance (Organise a Search, Hostile Animals, a Very Grand Thing) are given capital letters, I like to speak of ‘Pooh-bear capitals’. Terms like Cancel Culture and the Patriarchy are spoken of in Pooh caps. The Market seems to have a personality; Evolution, a conscious will; the Community an opinion.
These terms hold a great deal of explanatory power, but can also have the effect of dulling our thinking. In our preaching and cultural analysis, it is best to use such buzz words sparingly and instead to strive for clearly expressing what we actually mean.
Speaking of the Abstract as ‘a Thing’
This way of talking can be called ‘reification’: giving something a concrete reality. It is conceiving something that is abstract, possibly variegated, or even ambiguous, as being ‘a Thing’. A characteristic or pattern comes to be seen as a force or law or even a kind of personality or conspiracy.
Reification is actually very useful: large patterns, communities of people and abstract ideas can take on a life of their own. Jesus characterises the contemporary generation as being of one mind, and so as having general corporate guilt, on multiple occasions (Matt 11:16–19, 12:38–45, 23:29–33). The New Testament reifies concepts such as ‘the sinful nature’/‘the flesh’ (Rom 6–8) and ‘the world’ (1 Jn 2–5). Taking into account the tendencies of the mind of the flesh or the general fact of the hostility of the world helps us understand and explain our experience of Christian life and mission; the threat of temptation, opposition and apostasy.
The same benefits can potentially be gained from other abstract constructs: ones describing political, social and psychological phenomena.
Lazy Thinking
While there is a place for generalisations, personification and theoretical labels, there are serious problems with using them all the time. Yes, unbelief can be explained as the result of the World, the Flesh and the Devil. But the Scriptures also observe general differences between Jews and Gentiles in their unbelief, and even distinguish between individual Jews and Gentiles. In Romans 10, Paul can analyse the unbelief of his fellow Jews as well-meaning from a certain standpoint:
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. (verses 1–3)
Understanding the details and variations of how the people are blinded and allured and convinced and pressured into unbelief is vital for effective evangelism.
Describing some social phenomenon as a result of Privilege, Wokeness, Fragility or Cultural Marxism may have some truth to it, but has limited value in promoting deep understanding. At its worst, everything can be passed through a single explanatory sieve. If there’s a problem with the Kids of Today, the answer is almost certainly Expressive Individualism. Men behave badly because of the Patriarchy. This can shut down curiosity to probe the complexities and subtleties of individuals and larger dynamics. These vast abstract concepts become personified. They have motives and capital-A Agendas and these get unfairly imputed to individual humans and a whole range of diverse groups.
In his must-read essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell is damning in his critique of writing that does not encourage clear thought:
People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning— they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another—but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? … But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
Striving to make sense of a whole mix of priorities, economic pressures, cultural backgrounds, beliefs and personal struggles, will lead to rich, subtle, multi-pronged critiques and possible solutions. Simplistic explanations can give rise to clumsy solutions—and often no solution at all, but merely finger pointing.
Persuasiveness in Evangelism and Debate
The bold impact of reified concepts can be effectively used in evangelism and debate. Consider, for example, Jesus’ dialogue in John 8. This way of communicating is effective in capturing the big picture, helping someone see a different way of looking at and evaluating the world.
But when overused, or used in the wrong context, this approach may be less ‘telling it like it is’ and more grossly misrepresenting what it is. Instead of boldly gaining a hearing, it just attracts applause from the already convinced. When we find ourselves in sticky conversational waters, abstract pre-packaged labels and broad explanations can build walls rather than bridges. Instead of finding points of agreement and potential for persuasion, discussions become all-or-nothing. In some cases, the conversation can be about pressuring the other person to adopt your preferred terminology and little more. It can therefore be fruitful to try to get behind to talk about specifics in fresh words.
Striving for Clarity
Later in his essay, George Orwell advises:
When you think of something abstract, … unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose—not simply accept—the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally.
This a good exercise to practice. When preparing a sermon, seminar or social media post, be on the lookout for any reified abstract labels. Take a little time to think what exactly you want to say, and attempt to say it without recourse to jargon.
When a conversation reaches a dead-end, suggest defining some of the terms that are being thrown around, even using alternative expressions. Yes, in the wrong hands this can become a form of ‘sealioning’ (vexatious, insincere pedantry). But in the right hands it can open up impasses and lead to effective communication.
