Although he has always had an impressive vocabulary, my youngest son struggles with language. More specifically, the terms people use and the meanings behind them.
A few years ago, when it was popular to offer up an exaggerated “Shut up!” anytime someone said something outrageous or unbelievable, my son would take them literally and stop talking. Whenever someone responded “No way!” to one of his many adventures, the boy would become agitated because he honestly thought they were questioning the tale. A sarcastic “No!” that really meant, “yes” baffled him and more often than not, I noticed there was a difference between what was said and what he actually heard.
Once when I was homeschooling him, I asked what Cortez took to the Aztecs. I read the question directly from the teacher’s manual and from the possible answers they offered, I was clearly looking for something supply related, such as sugar, tobacco and corn.
The answer my son wrote on his paper? A boat. (Technically, he was not wrong, but I don’t think the authors of the curriculum were accounting for a kid on the autism spectrum when they wrote the question.)
My favorite example of my son’s grammatical glitches occurred when he began “chatting” with a certain young lady friend over social media accounts. In the course of conversation, he asked the girl an important question and became very puzzled by her answer.
“Mom, I need you to read something and tell me what it means without reading the rest of the conversation because…it’s kind of private,” he said.
I chuckled. “Well, I can’t promise that until I see what was said.”
I followed the boy to the computer and read the most recent exchange. He asked “Do you like me?” and her response was, “Duh!”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “What does ‘Duh!’ mean?”
I tried not to laugh. “It means she likes you kiddo, but she doesn’t want to type it out.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “Why don’t people just say what they mean and mean what they say? Why does it always have to be so complicated?”
That’s a good question and in today’s gospel, Jesus encourages his disciples to use plain and simple language when speaking with others. Unfortunately though, we tend to twist words around. We manipulate meanings and we spin syllables to fit our agendas. Even the term at the heart of today’s reading…”swear”…can mean a curse or a vow depending on how it is used in the sentence and it’s that kind of thing that can drive a kid like mine to distraction.
While I am not sure that Satan himself is standing at our shoulders every time we say things that we don’t really mean, the failure to use clear and concise language comes from a dishonest place. It comes from a place of pride, envy, greed, desire, anger, excess and laziness, which may provide a front for our sins but cannot change who we really are – flawed Christians striving to get closer to God.
Today’s readings for Mass: 1 KGS 19: 19-21; PS 16: 1B-2A AND 5, 7-8, 9-10; MT 5: 33-37
