How does language shape our beliefs?

I’ve always thought that Christian jargon was not helpful and a barrier to non-Christians. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

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I ran across this podcast this morning and thought it was a good fit to add to this thread. The first 2/3 are mainly about the usefulness of metaphors in conveying truth.
Unfortunately there wasn’t a transcript, but there is a nice blurb.

“ Even as formal religious adherence wanes (at least in the West), people go on talking about God and spiritual matters. But how is that even possible? How can you talk about someone (or something) that is beyond language? Is all God–talk literally nonsense?

In this episode, Nick Spencer speaks to Prof. Janet Soskice about her classic Metaphor and Religious Language and her forthcoming Naming God about how on earth we can hope to talk about God.?

THe whole thing is just a bit over 1/2 hour. Good for drive time or KP.

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I’ll start at least as I go to bed and see how I do.

Not nonsense at all but also no account is literally true in every detail IMO. God is far from the only thing that resists adequate verbal account. The biblical God is a cultural accretion of something beyond our reach which completes and perhaps explains us to ourselves, but poetically not explicitly. It isn’t evasion and it certainly isn’t a cheap con job. It is the opposite of meaningless; however the only meaning it can give you is that which you didn’t realize you already had. You can recognize it but you can’t pin it down or package it for universal consumption without pulverizing the winged life Blake extolled beyond all recognition.

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