“Dissonance” means a “lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict.” “Semantic” means “relating to meaning, especially in language.” Therefore, “semantic dissonance” would refer to lack of agreement in meaning or a lack of consistency in language.
I offer one example from contemporary culture. The British Medical Association announced about two months ago that “pregnant people” should replace “expectant mothers” so that men who “identify” as women or “intersex” (?) people do not get offended. Among the most ludicrous beliefs and behaviors that have ever appeared in human history, this has to be within the top 5. In a similar vein, the BMA also suggested scrapping the phrases “biologically male or female” in the work place and using the more neutral “assigned male or female.”
It would be quite humorous if it weren’t so idiotic and irrational. I also find it interesting that when you use such a verb as “assigned” in the passive voice, you implicitly affirm the existence of One who did the assigning! As God has designed the process, one who inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the father is assigned the male gender with all of its associated genes. When one inherits an X chromosome from the mother and an x chromosome from the father, that individual is genetically assigned the female gender and there really is nothing that either can do about it (cosmetic surgery and steroids notwithstanding).
My point, that all sane people easily recognize, is that gender is biologically determined, a fact of life that is incontrovertible. By the way, if the British ever come up with a way for a male to become pregnant, I’ll gladly refer to him as a “pregnant person.” A significant portion of our population is suffering from semantic dissonance.
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What we, as Christians, need to get our feet grounded in is a similar fact… There are biblical terms that only God can define. These are terms and concepts that are only biblical and only God can define them. If we use those terms in ways that are non-biblical, we might as well use “pregnant people” and “assigned male or female” in our common parlance.
I offer just a few terms that are universally abused in the religious world in their use and definitions: baptism, marriage, miracle, and pastor.
If you don’t define “baptism” as immersion, for example, then you are not giving that term its biblical, God-given definition. If you don’t identify “baptism” as being for the purpose of forgiveness of sins, then you are not using that term with its biblical, God-given definition.
Let us not be guilty of spiritual semantic dissonance. Let us use biblical terms in biblical ways and not contribute to the semantic dissonance in the religious world.
