CNN over the weekend posted an article about “talking Christian.” The author, John Blake, describes this as the Christian habit to obsessively regurgitate various words and phrases, sometimes having little idea what is really meant by them. The author had stolen my thunder! I was at that moment preparing to blog on the subject of what I call, “God talk.” To illustrate my version of this phenomena, let me describe another “talk” of the same genre—“car talk.” This “car talk” is chatter, usually between men (young and old) about the intricacies of the automobile. (I can’t do this glibly for I don’t know how to do “car talk”.) But it involves lots of discussion of the subtleties of carburetion….”four-barrel Holly” comes to mind. And there are the complexities of engine compression and possibly the desire to bore out the cylinder and install larger pistons to get enhanced power. And I remember “glass pack mufflers” being the rage. And there were details about “the struts” and “the cam shaft” or perhaps the fear of “throwing a rod.” Now, if I knew how to “car talk”, I could tie all the above…and more…into a meaningful conversation which would constitute an example of “car talk.” AND, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this “car talk.” It is one example of human engagement, it can be thought of as “social grooming”, much like chimps in a cage picking fleas off each other. ( Another example is “talking baseball” which I can do very well!). This social grooming is an essential part of day to day life.

Now though I am a “mal-adept” at car talk, I can recall being very adept at “God talk”, especially the hyper-conservative variety. It involved “well worn words and ready phrases” (Conrad Aiken) such as, “Jesus is my savior” or “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” or “He’s on the way back this very moment” or “I’m just a sinner saved by God’s grace” or “Why weren’t you in Sunday school yesterday, Brother Lewis?” or “Well, let’s remember to pray about it”. These and others are worn into a tapestry of routine conversation, the point of which was that each would recognize each other as a Christian and as a particular type of Christian. One would fit into the social context, one would be able to “offer a convincing performance” in that social context. And, once again there is nothing necessarily wrong with this variety of “talk”; for, religion does have a social dimension and this example of Christian “social grooming” has its function.

The problem lies when Christians, or persons of other faiths, never go beyond the social dimension of their glib expressions and search-out the hidden meanings. Failure to do so means that one has merely imbibed his/her faith, or the verbal trappings of his/her faith, from the social context. The words and phrases have only superficial meaning. They are “shop talk”. They amount to “chimps picking fleas off each other.”