Evangelical Semantics
If you grow up in the bible belt, you will quickly pick up on an entire vernacular that is specifically used to discuss Jesus and all his adjacent matters. It’s developing constantly, so the exact verbiage these days is probably different than it was forty years ago, but I’d bet it’s always been there.
You’ve probably heard the southern cliché of “Bless your heart” being a passive aggressive insult. It is. It just means they’re stupid. All the Jesus talk is in a similarly passive aggressive vain. The first time I picked up on this was at a weekend long, church-sponsored, all girls sleepover at my neighborhood friend’s house in Junior High. Anna Sullivan -- a reputably snobby bitch -- asked for any and all prayer requests. It was clear to me that she was only asking because her innate snobby bitchiness was motivating her to sniff out some hot gossip. And it worked! We all prayed that night that Sarah Michael’s way hotter boyfriend would not snub her for a Presbyterian (Presbyterians do NOT wait for marriage).
That was the first time I realized church conversation wasn’t just church conversation. It was a contest. How can you frame your normal, flawed, human sentiment in the most holy and morally pretentious way? Use random fluffy descriptive words that don’t really mean anything. That’s how. For instance, if someone has been nice to you recently you can say they “poured” into you. Poured what? You may be asking. The holy spirit? Their time and effort? Their vomit a la mother bird? I think all of those would be applicable, yes. But they never actually specify what is being poured when they say it. If a loving Baptist mother says, “Kacey’s youth leader has really poured into her recently,” your instinct might be to say something like: “Oh god! Get her in therapy immediately!” but this is actually considered a positive thing.
People usually do this pouring over a “season.” A season is any random interval of time you think works! Months, weeks, decades, even a few hours! Really, it’s most used to describe a phase of life, such as college, winter break, or the lead up to senior prom. It’s the perfect word to make your mundane summer vacation seem way more formative than it was.
The lesson to be learned when you take notice of this type of speech is that it’s not authentic. That’s the bottom line. If these conversations were novels describing regency era romance, I would applaud the imagery and dramatic connotations that are designed to make you really feel. They’re succeeding at their job as descriptors. But unfortunately, this is not a novel and the dramatic emotion that people feel in these communities is usually a result of exhaustion, emotional manipulation, inner turmoil, and so on and so forth.
Sometimes drama is good, sometimes it’s the best. Many memories wouldn’t even be worth remembering if you hadn’t built up the suspense in your psyche over the years. Drama makes life interesting and exciting when it comes to romance and travel and adventures. But drama when it comes to instructions on how to live life as an average kid in Alabama just stands to hurt people. Why must we get on our knees and cry for the lord? Why must we raise our hands, close our eyes, and wail to the ambiguous guitar riffs? Humble ourselves and wash the feet of our abusers? Rake our innocent consensual interactions with other kids that we love over coals of an outdated standard? I was just starting to be alive. I didn’t want to worship anything.
