I wondered the other day about how people use words, how I use words. Then I thought maybe, just maybe I could get a few folks to let me know what words they use, and how they rate them.
This is not totally unlike a study I did a few years back to find out how people have more than a few stereotypical trait words in their vocabularies. To be more representative of society I asked different categories of individuals: college students, middle-schoolers, pastors, mothers of children in preschool, and finally a group of seniors themselves.
Here's how it went. First I asked for permission of all individuals if they would be willing to participate in the study, then those who agreed were asked to list five different words that they would use to describe "elderly people." Then I got together with the groups of individuals to reveal and discuss my findings.
The result was interesting. (If you want to participate, give me your list of five words and I'll post back the most common word revealed in the study several years back and the ones I get from this post.)
Once I received the input I began to group the words according to different descriptors: warm, friendly, cold, mean, etc. One word I used was "ugly." The results and what became clear was a surprise to me. One of the more commonly used words was "forgiving." That means that many individuals, when they thought about the elderly, what came to mind, or a word that they would use to describe one who is elderly is the word "forgiving."
Then the trait words, when categorized, found the word "forgiving" in the "ugly" word group. When I got into the group settings to deliver the findings I asked why this was the case. The general response developed a thread that the reason "forgiving" was looked upon as an ugly word had to do with what it implied, namely, that there was a general attitude among seniors that there was something wrong with others that needed to be forgiven! How's that for twisting things around?
I always thought that people didn't like to hear the word "sin." When I expressed that notion to the study groups, the response was that "sin" didn't even come to mind, or basically didn't apply to the elderly as a trait word. So, on the basis of popular useage and expression, "sin" should be stricken from the dictionary, and the word "forgiving" has now come to hold a negative connotation. WOW!
No wonder there are so many things said, thought and done that cause stress, wickedness. and destructive pain in our society. We need to get things back into balance. There are norms according to which we are to interact and according to which we are to live... I guess that means one would fair better if the lot of us humans would get back to the basics. "Sin" is the transgression of the Law. "Forgiveness" on the other hand is a beautiful word that describes how our sins are no longer charged against us, but we are declared righteous or forgiven.
That's what our church in Hudson is all about: The declaration of the forgivness of sins on the basis of Christ's righteousness. Stay tuned you'll hear a lot more!
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