The appointed Psalmody for 19 August, 2020 in the daily lectionary is Psalm 12. It is about language.
At the end of a calendar year, there is now the annual report of new words added to the English language. In a sense, we voted those words by our use of them. Some stick around, others go the way of the do-do bird. This demonstrates a current understanding of language and that is language is the result of a kind of democracy that we create the language. This means language has little or no correlation with truth over us. Given that so many ‘important’ words go extinct because they no longer can represent any kind of truth…they can even sound corny. For instance: By the time I was thirteen or so (the ‘60s), my peers and I were already making fun of saying “groovy”. Groovy is a slang colloquialism popular during the late 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. It is roughly synonymous with words such as “cool”, “excellent”, “fashionable”, or “amazing”, depending on context (Source: Wikipedia). I do not think anyone says “groovy” these days. Or “the cat’s pajamas”. Or words like “he” or “she” are altered to the point we need new pronouns, according to the supposed LGBT cultural majority. In fact, there are supposedly 52 pronouns in this ‘cisgender’ age:
- Agender
- Androgyne
- Androgynous
- Bigender
- Cis
- Cisgender
- Cis Female
- Cis Male
- Cis Man
- Cis Woman
- Cisgender Female
- Cisgender Male
- Cisgender Man
- Cisgender Woman
- Female to Male
- FTM
- Gender Fluid
- Gender Nonconforming
- Gender Questioning
- Gender Variant
- Genderqueer
- Intersex
- Male to Female
- MTF
- Neither
- Neutrois
- Non-binary
- Other
- Pangender
- Trans
- Trans*
- Trans Female
- Trans* Female
- Trans Male
- Trans* Male
- Trans Man
- Trans* Man
- Trans Person
- Trans* Person
- Trans Woman
- Trans* Woman
- Transfeminine
- Transgender
- Transgender Female
- Transgender Male
- Transgender Man
- Transgender Person
- Transgender Woman
- Transmasculine
- Transsexual
- Transsexual Female
- Transsexual Male
- Transsexual Man
- Transsexual Person
- Transsexual Woman
- Two-Spirit
(Source: ABC news)
Please note that this article was published in 2014. In the 16 years (many lifetimes now in the cyberspeed age), this probably has morphed as well, but the confusion has not for too many people. These made-up ‘pronouns’ (note: they really can even work as pronouns! “The neutrois said to me…”) do not represent the simple biological truth: male and female but correspond to man-made philosophy.
I think this all started with the clamor for ‘inclusive language’. I have a book, More Than Words by a Roman Catholic nun, and she two pages of different ‘inclusive’ names for God, like “Warm Center” or “Baker Woman God”. This was published in the first wave of ‘inclusive’ language but the only thing not included in ‘inclusive’ language is truth. Some of the goals were practical but they weren’t enough for the sociological tyranny of the language police. This all has been summed up in a Bible verse, from Psalm 12:
May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, in his reflections on the Psalms (Christ in the Psalms), writes this about Psalm 12:
“…words are necessarily taken to mean whatever the present living members of a society say that they mean, so that the study of language really becomes a branch of sociology. In fact, sociology textbooks themselves make this claim explicitly. Moreover, this notion of speech is so taken for granted nowadays as nearly to assume the rank of a self-evident principle. Nonetheless, it is deeply erroneous.
It is also egregiously dangerous to spiritual and mental health, for such a view of language dissolves the relationship of speech to the perception of truth, rendering man the lord of language without affirming the magisterial claims of truth over man. Declared independent of such claims, language submits to no tribunal higher than arbitrary social dictates. Human society, no matter how sinful and deceived, is named the final authority over speech, which is responsible only to those who use it, subject to no standards above the merely social. That is to say, in this view words must mean what people determine them to mean, especially such people as cultural engineers, political activists, feminist reformers, news commentators, talk-show hosts, and other professionals who make their living by fudging the truth.
This current notion of language was well formulated in the declaration of the proud and rebellious in (Psalm 12) in a passage manifestly portending the mendacious times in which we live: “With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?”
Many have prevailed but we do not cut off the flattering lips, the Lord does. He does want us to teach the truth that frees us from the old and new tyrannies, even when we invite disdain and virulent arguments. We have the pure soap that cleanses our tongues and our lips and our minds, and protects us: His Word.
“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
7 You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man.
Concordia and Koinonia 
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