Prudence: A Language Shift

"I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, And I find knowledge and discretion.PROVERBS 8:12 NASB

 I am struck today as I am often by the language shift in just a few hundred years.

Take the word prudence for instance. Culturally that was a strong and wise word until the 60s. I know this because it used to be what parents sometimes named their daughters back in my great grandparents day.

My parents generation associated that word it with "the establishment" and the free love movement shortened the word to "PRUDE" and turned it into something it was never meant to be.

 I was born after that and grew up on messages in the music that was defiant and angry, where those angry people protested war and checked out of responsibility.

Then the rise of birth control gave women the freedom of sex without the consequences of pregnancy. As a result the divorce rate soars. Suddenly the word prudent was seen as shackles to keep a woman in her place... barefoot and pregnant. Then they legalize abortion so it didn't hinder her ability to have choice. And suddenly we are not very far from the Aztec who threw their babies off the temples as human sacrifice.

I am also struck by the tension it creates for a translator who needs to speak to the heart of a passage to a generation of people who's social mores no longer recognize God's truth as absolute. The boundary stones of meaning have shifted so much in just my lifetime ... and I know that there is nothing special about this generation. Every generation slips this way.

Lord, I desperately need your wisdom -- the Holy Spirit to keep the truth clear from the semantics and cultural references I drag behind me as I read your word. I get a glimpse now and then of how our short life spans keep us from truly grasping and passing down your wisdom. It takes such careful thought to try to untangle what you say and the heart of your meaning when my worldly wisdom and emotional roots are completely knotted in my own experience.

Words matter. They define the container of our understanding and when they shift it breeds delusion. I worry for a generation of people who don't understand what Gods will is because the plain words are no longer plain.

Help me, Lord. I want to know you as you have revealed yourself in the Word. Help me let go of the cultural shackles and truly let Your Word define me. Amen.