Techno Babble

DateLine (8/3/05 – San Juan, Puerto Rico)

I have been immersed in the technical world of computers just about my entire professional career; going on 28 years now. While it has been interesting being in on the early days of the development and application of computers in manufacturing I’ll have to admit that often I’m exasperated by the lapse of my peers into their own efficient speaking patterns built around three letter acronyms and techno babble.

Most other professions have their own version of techno babble. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, pharmacists, theologians, and carpenters all have this highly specialized shorthand language that is used when conversing with their peers that immediately identifies them as members of the “fraternity,” is highly efficient if you know the dialect, and tends to prevent the uninitiated from intruding into their vocational culture.

I am afraid that Christians are no different. Over the centuries we have insulated ourselves from the unbeliever by Christian speak; terms that we throw around when engaging each other in speech. A lot of our language has become so second nature to us we probably do not even realize that it sounds much like my characterization of techno babble that I referenced earlier.

The last few years the Lord has opened some doors to me that have sensitized me to both vocational and religious techno babble. I have had the opportunity to travel and work in several cultures much different than my own comfortable surroundings in Green Pond, South Carolina.
When communicating in these different culture settings I have found that I have to make my language very simple. I have been amazed at how many idioms and phrases that I use routinely in South Carolina that produces blank stares in New England, San Francisco, or Puerto Rico.

God has used these experiences to drive the point home to me that in order to engage the culture in the places where our work and leisure takes us we must simplify and personalize. We must drop some of our “comfortable” language that we use on Sunday morning and talk about our personal relationship with God in straightforward language; culturally sensitive language without doctrinal compromise. Nothing is more powerful than the plain spoken story of a vibrant relationship with God. Try cleaning up your language in the marketplace where you live.