Dear friends and family,
In Word Made Flesh, we attempt to befriend and walk alongside very broken people who are often excluded from normal society. Normal social rights and services that we take for granted are often denied them. One of the ways their humanity is degraded is through language. Hookers. Glue-sniffers. Street dogs. Indios. One of the interesting ways colonial Spanish culture persists in the language is the use of the Usted and Tu forms (equivalent to “you” in English). Usted implies a distance and formality. Tu signifies familiarity and closeness. Some folks of the urban upper class insist that people in the rural and/or indigenous lower class use Usted when addressing them, even though they respond in the Tu form. It seems to act as a linguistic wall, separating the clean and proper upper crust from the poor, uncultured masses (sometimes from which they came).
As far as social and economic power, I seemed to have struck the jackpot in the “lottery of the womb.” I was born white, male, and heterosexual into a hard-working Christian family in the late-20th century United States. Even with a pretty inclusive and educated upbringing, language of exclusion comes naturally to me, and it’s a really hard habit to break. Every time I use even subtle grammatical tricks to differentiate myself from “the other”, I assume that my post in life is superior, that I earned everything that I have. But as Paul writes in 1 Cor. 12:22-23, “On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.” Rather than thinking in terms of political correctness, is just seems right to address people “with special honor” or simply with more accurate and respectful words. So here are some language changes that we’ve been trying to make:
*women who prostitute instead of prostitutes. Using a noun/adjective all in one over-identifies a person with their line of work, especially when that work is dehumanizing. As we’ve discovered recently in the U.S., when a person mistakes their occupation with their identity, job loss can be devastating. But employment cannot change our true identity: children of a loving God.
*majority world or global south instead of developing world or third world. “Third world” is an outdated cold-war term that today implies an economic value above all else. It doesn’t take into account the country’s spiritual state, cultural wisdom, or sense of community, to name just a few. “Developing world” implies that it has not yet arrived to the pinnacle of human civilization, that is, the “developed world”. “Majority world” simply states that it’s where the majority of the world’s people live, even though they have much less economic and political power. “Global south” notes where on the globe these countries are found.
*male-dominated Spanish. Each word in Spanish has a gender – male or female. When multiple genders are grouped together, you have to use the male gender. If a group consists of one male teacher and 19 female ones, you would say “profesores” (male) instead of “profesoras” (female), even though 95% of the people are not male. Our language institute is good at reminding folks to say both “Señoras y Señores”, for example, when there are both genders present. Throughout history, women have suffered more domestic violence, have done more work, and have made up a larger percentage of the poor. A simple change of language is a small step in the right direction for validating the role women play in society.
*income instead of standard of living. I don’t know if Bill Gates has a very high “standard of living”. I don’t know if he loves his children, if he has half a dozen really close friends, and if he can trust his neighbor to look after his house. But I do know that he has loads of money (“income”). There are about 2-3 billion people with pretty low incomes in the world, but it doesn’t always show the full picture of their quality of life. Many of them have more close friends than I do, can trust their neighbors more, and are more spiritually grounded. Don’t get me wrong – they need to increase their income, a lot, for vital goods and services like medicine, clean water, and education. But we need to delink the absolute correlation we’ve built between money and well-being.
By the time you get this letter, we’ll have wrapped up language school and be living and working in El Alto – hopefully in our own apartment! After a month in El Alto, we’ll be traveling to Nebraska for a WMF N. American staff retreat that happens every three years. After that, we’ll be traveling throughout the Midwest, meeting and sharing with you all and looking for new partnerships as well. As I write, our schedule is still fairly open. If you belong to a small group or church that would have a venue for us to share about our community in El Alto (or even if you just want to get coffee and chat), please contact us. These meetings can take any shape available – casual, interactive, preaching, 4 minutes or 4 hours.
Thoughts for Prayer:
* We are looking for an apartment in El Alto. Please pray that we would find a safe, inexpensive place close to our community that we can make our home.
*The Gathering is WMF’s N. American staff retreat that we have every three years. Pray that we would be refreshed and encouraged.
*Pray that we could create new bonds and renew old ones with supporters and churches as we share the story of our community throughout the Midwest.
Grace & Peace,
– Adam (and Becky) Thada