Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye wrote a book I turn back to every now and then called The Educated Imagination. In it, he writes about the use of langauge in the service of visions larger than our immediate needs and social settings.
He writes of literature – of course – but I find myself wondering at times if he speaks to us preachers as well.
There’s something in all of us that wants to drift toward a mob, where we can all say the same thing without having to think about it, because everybody is all alike except people that we can hate or persecute. Every time we use words, we’re either fighting against this tendency or giving in to it.
Do we too often resort to cliches and stock images or phrases? Do we reach for the old reliable illustration that saves us from discovering a new one? Do we endorse folk wisdom because we don’t have any wisdom of our own to offer? Do we accept what “everyone knows” because to do otherwise might put us on the wrong side of common sense?
These are my questions, not his. But like George Orwell’s classic essay on the English language, I think Northrup suggests rightly that when we get lazy with language we do more than deliver saggy sermons, we cheapen the word itself. As those who come as witnesses to the Word, we pupliteers should be especially cautious of that.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
