Lost Metaphors: The Word

I write this one with a bit of fear.  When I wrote about living water, we inexplicable lost our water for part of a day (honestly, first world problems).  Then, I wrote about light.  Well we had a SNOW storm in SAN ANTONIO and had 4 extra house guests and lost all our power - lights.  We learned we need to get some flashlights and hide them from our children.  So, as I write about the WORD who knows what will happen (we have already had laryngitis around here - so maybe??).

Earlier this year my husband brought home the book The Kingdom of Speech.   Tom Wolfe is not a "Christian author" and the lessons I drew from his writing are the opposite of his own conclusions.  It was exactly because it wasn't his intention to point to faith, but so clearly did, that made it so fascinating.

The first part of the book discusses the questionable tale and morality of Darwin as he published the Origin of the Species.  Why did it take almost 20 years?  Why did he publish it just as someone else out in the field "discovered" the same idea?  Then he moves into the difficulty that Darwin had in explaining the origin of speech and how it "evolved".  As he says, "The inexplicable power of the Word - speech, language - was driving him (Darwin) crazy."  The way Wolfe portrays it you get the impression that Darwin just guessed to fill in that blank - somehow our speech evolved from bird calls.  Wolfe continues showing that for decades no one could really explain this question. Evolutionists buried it.  Until, Noam Chomsky came along in the 1950s. 

Wolfe is not kind to Noam Chomsky and his thoughts about language development.  Chomsky introduced the nativist understanding that explained there is some innate language structure within all of us.  For five decades Chomsky's assumptions reigned.  He couldn't show you this structure or explain how it got there, but all languages fit certain patterns and criteria and so it has to be there.  Right??  Until . . .

there was a missionary in deepest Brazil at the end of the 20th century (crazy stories - I want to read his account in Don't Sleep, There are Snakes).  The missionary had been sent out to help translate the Bible into the native tongue- so he was a linguist.  However, the people group he met had a language that defied all the norms - including the norms that Noam Chomsky had explained were universal and innate to all people.  Their language was so primitive it didn't have future tense or numbers.  Professors came into study it and found it was true. Chomsky's explanation, that had reigned since the 1960s, was blown and really all of man's best thoughts about language.  So, a missionary upended the best thought about speech and language man had.  (Spoiler - the missionary loses his faith in this journey as well)

That brings us to the present day.  Last year, 2016, Wolfe found an article which he sums up this way: 

It seems that eight heavyweight Evolutionists - linguists, biologists, anthropologists, and computer scientists - had published an article announcing they were giving up , throwing in the towel, folding, crapping out when it came to the question of where speech - language - comes from and how it works. 

Harvard, Cambridge and MIT admit they have learned nothing about this issue.  In the past 150 years, since Darwin's work, we discovered DNA, rocketed to the moon and much more; yet, the best scientists still can't explain where language comes from!?  

This is the point where Wolfe and I walk different paths.  Wolfe explains how he believes that language is the first "kingdom" or a cultural construct.  It is the first thing humans made.  Honestly, his explanation was fairly far fetched for me because all I could think was

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

and here

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.   John 1:14

and here

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Genesis 1:3

God didn't think it - he spoke it.

Finally,

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

1 Corinthians 1:27

So, the question remains - where does speech and language come from?  Science clearly can't tell you.  You can take a leap of faith into cultural constructs, but I will trust in the word of God.   This coming year, may we be those who receive the word who became flesh, allow God to have ways and mysteries higher than ours, and speak his words of truth as his image bearers in the world.

Merry Christmas!!