I find words fascinating. I think about them often—what’s the most effective way to use them, how to cause delight, how to prick the conscience, the best way to tell the truth about the world.

Of course, at present, the idea that there’s such a thing as “the truth“ is a contested notion. As I’ve said on occasion, and without being especially partisan—merely making an observation—the most alarming thing about the current occupant isn’t that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, shoot someone, and not lose any supporters—it’s that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and say there’s no such thing as 5th Avenue, and not lose any supporters.

Truth can’t help but take a beating in a world where “alternative facts” and “fake news“ are concepts to which part of the population is deeply committed. And if that’s the case with truth, then the words that are meant to carry the weight of truth also suffer.

The idea that words are cheap is hard to escape. We’re assailed by so many of them every day that it’s increasingly difficult to take seriously … them or the claims they make about the world.

It’s not enough that history recounts that there have been people who say the earth is flat; I saw not long ago that there are people  alive today who believe the earth is shaped like a donut. As one astrophysicist—who probably never thought when she entered grad school, she’d be spending part of her vocational life correcting idiot claims. She—who must certainly have her palm surgically attached to her forehead—said, in an elegantly understated way: [The donut-shaped theory of the earth] “doesn’t start off with a question that we need to answer.”

I feel the same way just about every time Christian nationalists open their mouths about God.

So, astrophysicists and pastors are kind of like the same thing.

Words are definitely slippery little things, but they aren’t entirely dead, are they?

There are some words that do things. In the academy we call them performative utterances. Things like promise, name, bet, agree, swear, declare, order, predict, warn, insist, declare or refuse. “In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences [that] not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing.”

Regardless of the state of our social and political discourse, words still do things. Six years ago, now, I stood in front of about eighty people and said to my daughter and—now—daughter-in-law: “I now pronounce you married.”

When we do baptisms, and I say, “Eleanor, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Amen,” we who are gathered realize that we’re making a claim that the universe has shifted.

But performative utterances aren’t all positive. Words can also do negative things, can’t they?

I don’t know about your parenting style, but maybe you recognize this:

“Dad, Michael at my school called me a ‘butthead.’”

“Well, are you a butthead?”

“No.”

“Then why do you care what Michael says?”

See, that’s easy to say, isn’t it? The implication is that they’re just words. And what are words, after all? They’re not actual physical realities. They can’t really hurt you, can they?

But even as we say it, we know it’s not true. As I mentioned a few Sundays ago, Fred Craddock used to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones … but words can kill me.”

“You’re worthless.”