This past year I sat in awe as two geriatrics battled it out for the position of leader of the free and “civilized” world. With all our technology, medical achievements, vaccines, iPhones, spaceships, and talking refrigerators, these men choose to the weapon of words. Mono et mono in absolutely no different stance than 2000 years ago, monologues and arguments won or lost hearts and minds. Cicero would still find a home and would triumph today even if he learned absolutely nothing about closed circuits. 

Words still create universes, change minds, lead people, kill and make alive. Nothing comes close. Words toppled the Czar, murdered Sharon Tate, convinced the most educated of Europe to put Jews in ovens. You can create the greatest invention, find a cure for a cancer, or invent a perpetually renewable energy. But if you can’t explain it, convince others to buy it, promote it with words, you will get nowhere. Science and technology sit in the trunk compared to words. They are the driver and the engine. Words!

Just look at today. Words create new identities such as transgender, cis, clump of cells, fascist, bisexual, woke, communist, etc. In the end no one cares about physical reality, as much as what you say about physical reality. As soon as a child speaks she begins to manipulate her parents with words just to see their reaction. Words destroy relationships, create such low self esteem in kids that they believe themselves to be what their drunk dad calls them. 

In the fantastic movie The Graduate, some adult tells Dustin Hoffmann’s teenage character that the future was “plastics.” Wrong, it is still words. Forget the sciences kids, get a degree in the liberal arts for staying power.

This really shouldn’t surprise us as we listen to songs 24/7, binge T.V. shows and movies, need to ban Trump from Twitter, and delete a whole world universe like Parler because it’s dangerous.
Words are more important than reality. They are a part of reality, can not be separated from reality, and even create reality. The problem lies in the user however. People suck with words. How often smart ethicists describe their fear of man’s misuse of science, that’s nothing compared to our misuse of words. Mankind, with words, destroyer of worlds. We are all Goebbels. Repent.

If I have’t made the case yet, consider God. Oh, you thought God uses words because He has to lower himself to our intellect? Wrong. Before there was man or anything, words were spoken.  Let there be light. God spoke and it was. We speak and we create half-ass disturbing crap. 
While we create illogical illusions shaped as blackholes bending everything inward, God, the creator of light, spoke again. This time in the flesh, standing on our ground, in our sins, in our suffering, in our graves. With words, He instructed. With words, He quieted the lying voices of demons and dark teachers. With words, He fed thousands in the desert. With words, He declared, “It is finished.” With words, He rose and gave His spirit to sinners saying “Peace be with you.”  And He put His words into the mouth of sinners to speak and breathe on others.

So today, only with the weapon of words does Jesus through His people release people from their guilt and shame, point them to a new reality where there is no death, no sin, no Satan. While the world is busy using words to create monstrosities of death and sex, God speaks and shatters that darkness and creates for us a reality that has legs and will last forever.

Speak, O Lord, your servant listens.