Amen and Awomen, the Next Big Sin

 


A member of the House of Representative recently delivered the opening prayer. He ending it with "Amen and Awomen."  It has ignited a firestorm among conservative pundits. How dare he? 

These complaints are like those when football players take a knee when the National Anthem is played. The solution is simple. Stop both the prayers and the National Anthem. 

The cost of chaplains in the two houses of Congress is something like $800,000. That could fund lots of soup lines for people who need them. What it pays for now is absolutely nothing. Why not pray to one of the Greek or Pagan gods? It will do just as much good. 

Use of Awomen is in keeping with gender neutral language. Bible are being rewritten to exclude the traditional male dominance, why not change prayers? 

Besides eliminating prayers there are other options. The prayer could end to prayer with, "Thank you for praying with me" or "the end." Or, an option might be, "I know this doesn't do any good but its always been done so let's move on."

One theory about why religions are fussy about words is that language itself may have been seen as a miracle back in prehistory. We don't know what took place before language, but the ability to describe things or even thoughts that no one could see at the moment, a complete abstraction, must have been as exciting as going to the moon in my lifetime.  

Even now some consider certain words to be magical. I remember watching Pat Robertson's son Gordon on the 700 Club a few years ago. He went to great length describing exactly, precisely, what words to use in a particular kind of prayer he was advocating. His message was that the words used were as important as the prayer itself. I don't understand myself how words in English can be as meaningful as words in the original languages of Christianity. There are a lot of things I don't understand.

In addition, I don't understand why there is anything wrong with saying "Awomen."

Comments

  1. tsmJanuary 6, 2021 at 6:50 PM

    there is no law against saying Awoman. it's just that it is beyond stupid to say it. amen is an ancient phase meaning so be it or be it done. it has nothing to do with gender. and anyone who thinks it is, as I said, really a clown of some sort. BTW, something to ponder. language would be impossible w/o the ability to abstract, to have a sense of universals. as to words, we are well advised to use them properly, carefully and logically. failure to do gives us the sloppy, silly, superficial utterances of so many of today's politicos, clergy, academics and, for that matter, the so-called men on the street. or worse, it verges on something like the Newspeak in Orwell's 1984. (a book that I wager that you have never read).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jon LindgrenJanuary 6, 2021 at 7:15 PM

    tsm -- "Orwell's 1984 (a book I wager you have never read.)

    What?? I've read it two or three times, once since I started this blog and have discussed it more than once here. What could be a better example of the guy who sat in his office writing about a fictitious battles than what we see today with Trump sitting in his office writing about fictitious fraud in voting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. tsmJanuary 7, 2021 at 6:58 AM

    you have read 1984 several times. wow! but you obviously didn't get the message.













    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jon LindgrenJanuary 7, 2021 at 8:57 AM

      tsm "..you obviously didn't get the message."

      Share with all of us what the message was.

      Delete

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