Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words are Vanishing - And How We Can Revive Them: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing--and How We Can Revive Them

by Jonathan Merritt

Shauna Niequist (Foreword)

In this seminal work on the declining vocabulary of faith in America, one of this generation's most prolific and respected religion writers breathes new life into ancient expressions and helps readers communicate their beliefs in fresh ways.

When religion writer Jonathan Merritt moved from the Bible Belt to New York City, he ran into an unexpected language barrier. Whenever conversations turned to faith, his words became stilted. Words, both ancient and modern, that Jonathan had used for decades to describe matters of the soul no longer translated to those he encountered.

In an America rapidly transitioning to a secular, more pluralistic society, many modern believers struggle to talk about faith and their relationships with God, when understanding of terms like "grace" or "gospel" can no longer be assumed. Some words, like "sin" and "hell," have become so negative they are nearly conversation-enders. The desire to express faith more clearly sends Jonathan on a quest to excavate anew some of the most meaningful words in a believer's dictionary.

• ISBN10: 1601429304
• ISBN13: 9781601429308
• Publish Date: 14 August 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Convergent
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781601429308

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Merritt the Younger Again Proves He Is His Father's Equal. Jonathan Merritt and I grew up in roughly similar church traditions at roughly the same time in roughly the same geographic area. His father would eventually become President of the Southern Baptist Convention, my pastor would later become President of the Georgia Baptist Convention. Growing up, while not knowing of Jonathan specifically, his father was among *the* most respected men I had ever heard. As in, there was a deacon or two in my own small church, there was Charles Stanley, and there was James Merritt.

I began reading Jonathan's own work a few years ago with the release of A Faith of Our Own, and both it and the next book Jesus Is Better Than You Imagined were as though Jonathan was in my own head, even while speaking - as he does here - of lessons he has learned in his own life.

In this particular book, Jonathan again teaches us using lessons he has observed over the last few years of his own life and winds up touching on many issues of our day even while speaking to eternal truth.

At the end of the first part of the book, when he specifically tells more conservative thinkers that they may not like all that is to follow and brings up the Hebrew concept of midrash, my fears were raised. I just read another ARC of another contemporary that grew up a couple hundred miles away from our home region but in a similar background and time who had used the concept quite a bit in her new book, and let's just say I wasn't impressed with that effort.

Jonathan quickly dispelled the fears though, and actively sought to explain his own new understanding of the various sacred words we use in religious speak, particularly among Christians. He never claims authority, he just claims conversation and what he has found the words mean for him, and invites the readers to consider for themselves. Yet again, it turns out that he largely sees them exactly as I have come to - even without me realizing I had been on my own similar journey over the years. In one particularly poignant moment, he speaks to a word he used around the time of the publication of his last book and what he now thinks of it. In another, he uses Fred Rogers to explain the concept of neighbor. And in another, he exposes a revolutionary concept for thinking about a word that Christians have used far too long as a divider between the "righteous few" and the "pagan hordes". (My words in quotes there, not his.)

In the end, Merritt the Younger winds up finding a truth that I had tattooed on my own skin nearly a decade ago, and he exposes it in a new, fresh way for things that I had never considered.

That truth?

Jesus didn't define our words so much as redefine them in revolutionary ways. Ways that still speak to us 2000 years later, if only we will consider them anew.

Won't you join us in unpacking, examining, and rediscovering the ancient sacred words all over again?