Let’s just admit right now that, over time, clichés start to creep into the conversation of active Christians. Just a few.
The early Christian Rock musician Larry Norman had a great little schtick on this. He has the zealous Christian trying to share his faith with a friend. They guy has no clue what “washed in the blood” or “born again” or “saved” mean. So the Christian sums up:
“I’m trying to, trying to find out if you ever… if you ever deeply experienced a kind of personal revelation, you know a… a… like a sanctific… you know, like being born… you know, washed in the… consecrate… I’m trying to tell you the Good News.”
“The good news? What’s that?”
“You’re going to hell.”
“What’s the bad news?”
(You can here the full thing in Norman’s own inimitable voice here.)
It is probably a natural thing. If we are growing into a new faith, beginning to look at all of life through the lens of biblical teaching, we have to develop a language. The people we are growing with will be the people who share that language.
It even happens when we talk to God. (Sadly I’ve been unable to locate an old comic from The Wittenburg Door in which a college student prayed “Dear Lord, I just really pray that you’d just really help me stop saying ‘just really’ when I pray.” Maybe people don’t say “just really” any more. I just really hope not.)
Sometimes, though, even the words Scripture teaches us to pray become meaningless. Take “Amen,” the last word of almost every prayer. It is so universal that it even got tacked onto the Lord’s Prayer in later biblical manuscripts, and it remains there most of the time when Christians pray it.
We lose something crucial when “Amen” become’s the Christian equivalent of
“’Nuff said!” or
“So long for now!”
The Heidelberg Catechism does a lovely job of helping us really pray this crucial word.
“What does that little word ‘Amen’ express?”
“This shall truly and surely be!”
It is not just a closing. It is a declaration of faith. It is like Jean-Luc Picard commanding the Enterprise:
“Make it so!”
We don’t command God, of course. Maybe it is better to say we have the confidence that God can and will make it so.
The Catechism backs off a bit from the mere confidence that God will do our bidding.
“It is even more sure that God listens to my prayer
than that I really desire what I pray for.”
In a relationship of reverent faith that honors God as God, this is a better hope. Better to rejoice that the God of the universe is willing to listen to my cries, that I am truly heard by someone who loves me to the depth of my being, than to think I can call the shots.
This discussion of the last word of the Lord’s Prayer, and of all our prayers, comes in the last question of the Catechism, number 129. So we’ll have to let that be our last word on the topic as well.
Amen!
My little rant on the phrase “in Jesus’ name we pray” will have to wait for another occasion.
What clichés do you hear the most often as Christians speak and pray?
What can we do to move beyond clichés in our praying and living?
____________
If you like the post, please share the link! If you don’t see the sharing buttons, click here and scroll down.
Gary, I share your dislike of clichés and jargonese in Christian circles. To my mind, “Amen” usually means, “So be it” or “I agree”. Yet we can be in danger of simply mouthing this and other words thoughtlessly as a manner of speech without considering their contextual meaning. My pet bugbear is actually ending every prayer with, “In Jesus’ name” as if it isn’t a proper prayer without it. Those words suggest to me, “representing all that Jesus is and has done for us” rather than, “Now, God will hear me” as is often implied. Looking forward to you speaking on that topic another day! PS:I also have some Larry Norman LPs and saw him perform in London many moons ago…ah, those were the days…sorry, lapsing into clichés…oops 🙁
P.S. I’m jealous that you saw Stormin’ Norman live!
Thanks, Joy, for starting the conversation! Glad to see you here.
I do hope to chime in on the use of “In Jesus’ name”. My thoughts didn’t fit this post since this is essentially part of a series on the Heidelberg Catechism, and that phrase isn’t discussed there.
You point out something interesting about it — the sort of ritual quality that we bring to such phrases, as if it were not a real or official prayer without them.
I’ll be looking forward to your post on “in Jesus’ name.” I really enjoyed this post on “amen.” Personally, the connection between Picard’s “make it so” and “amen” is challenging and encouraging to me…I like it.
Please comment on “In YOUR name we pray”. I hear it so frequently.
Thanks Hannah an llosante! I’ll do it soon. Hope you’ll come back and join the conversation again soon.
I believe that we need to perform cultural translations of some of our cliches, and it would bring the meaning to the foreground. For example, in the right group, ending a group prayer with, not a group amen, but “so say we all!”
Then there is the Masonic closing to prayer, “So mote it be.”
Thanks Doug and Paul. I wonder if either of these quite captures the meaning of “Amen!” Though I won’t claim to really understand the Masonic one (and more understandable than less has to be a good thing), both sound like they affirm our own personal approval of the prayer. “Amen!” on the other hand, is more a confident expression of trust that God hears and answers.
Love the post.
Cliches are both fun and frustrating. Fun when you can laugh at yourself for using them too much, frustrating when you actually need a more precise meaning–or don’t need the baggage that comes with it.
Love what you said about “amen.” I once preached a sermon on that word, when I was pastoring a small rural church in southern Oregon (average age 70?). I was explaining the “make it so…it will be like this” kind of concept and I ended the sermon with the immortal words of Bootsy Collins; “what it is.” Aaaah…you had to be there.
Thanks Gary!
Gary, I enjoyed your comments concerning prayer cliches. The one which gets to me quickest and pushes my “tune out button” first is very common when ministers and lay persons of a very large denomination here in the South pray: “Lord, I just (whatever).” Frequently it is followed by a very heartfelt prayer though sometimes by the taking to God of a “laundry list” of which I’m certain He’s already aware. In either case the “I just” seems to me to either trivialize the wonder of approaching God in prayer or the content of the prayer which follows.
Thanks Dana and Jon (this is Jon, right?) Glad to have you both in the conversation.
“I just…” is paradoxically more accurately expressed in the self-contradictory “I just really…” “I just…” sounds like I’m asking for very little. “I really…” sounds like I’m emphatic and it is important. Personally these seem to be just verbal clutter. Surely God doesn’t mind, but clearing out clutter is good for anyone else who is listening in.
Dana, fill me in about Bootsy Collins some time!