You may have heard this one before, but the point of it, sadly, eludes a lot of people today.

Maybe it’s their education, maybe it’s social media, maybe it’s intellectual laziness – there are lots of things we could point to. But there’s something wrong when someone automatically says, “Five”.

Because if you call a tail a leg, a dog still only has four legs.  Because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg — it’s still a tail.

This is a matter of both logic and language. Logic, because changing the name of something doesn’t change its essence. Language, because the whole purpose of language is to foster communication, which requires that words mean what they’re supposed to mean and refer to what they’re supposed to refer to when we use them.

Imagine the metaphysical chaos that would result if some people started using the word “finish” to mean “get started” — or “begin” to mean “over and done”. Now imagine the danger and the damage that would be done if 1% of the population decides that “Stop” now means “Move as fast as you can!” and another 9% goes along with it because they think that’s what the smart or cool people are doing these days.

Christians are going to be particularly sensitive to this kind of redefinition because truth and clarity are important to us, in terms of the content of our faith, in our communications, and in our character as new creations in Christ — who is Truth and speaks only truth. But even non-Christians should recognize that playing fast and loose with the meaning of words reduces understanding, clouds judgment, and fosters division.  Indeed, often the whole purpose of redefining terms is to separate the “in” from the “out” and draw clear lines between those with the “new knowledge” and those without it.

Naturally, the people who want to change the meanings of words rarely want attention drawn to what they’re doing — success requires the public not being aware that their minds are being redirected and their understandings altered. So it won’t be surprising if you didn’t see these shifts and redefinitions when they came along:

• A human being is only a person (with value, rights, etc.) when fully conscious, fully able to communicate, learn, live independently, etc. (which leaves out not just the not yet born and the comatose, but also the physically and mentally disabled, those with severe illnesses or injuries, and even, with some (re)definitions, the sleeping).
• To criticize or correct a person (or a group of people), i.e., to say, “You are wrong about this” or “You could do better than that” is hatred (and cannot possibly come from a place of love or concern — or simply better knowledge or wisdom).  The flip side of this is that hating the people you’re supposed to hate, without regard for who or what is correct, is virtuous, perhaps even an expression of love toward the supposed victims of the people you’re supposed to hate.
• Marriage is nothing more than a commitment between people who love each other (which is not how cultures, societies, or systems of law defined marriage through pretty much all of human existence, up until about five minutes ago, and is definitely not how God, the author and designer of marriage, defines it, either).
• Similarly, family is whatever group of people you feel gives you the love and support you want (meaning that the mutuality, responsibilities, and legal protections of the father-mother-children unit are devalued or discarded).
• Kindness and love toward and doing right by another person is determined by what that person feels and wants (or that you are convinced they would feel or want, if they were able to say so), not by any objective moral (or legal) standard, i.e., whether something is right or wrong, even to point of allowing things like self-mutilation, suicide, and euthanasia. This also means, of course, that to argue against or not allow people doing such things counts as unkindness, hatred, and evil.
• The conflation of the concepts of outcome and intent.  If X turns out the way we want, then the reasons for doing X must be unassailably good; also, if our reasons for doing Y are unassailably good, then however Y turns out must be great. (Similarly, if you have good intentions when you do Z, then Z must necessarily be a good idea.)  This sets aside any kind of objective evaluation and substitutes “virtue” for actual judgment or wisdom.

Sometimes what is done is not so much a redefinition as it is a broadening — a term’s meaning is stretched to encompass much more than it should, limiting its significance for the thing it originally referred to or giving significance to things beyond what the term was designed for. One example of this would be the sentiment that “Animals are people, too” (no, they’re not). Another is the idea that “Speech is violence” to put statements or expressions that you find hurtful or offensive in the same category as things that everyone objects to; this equation also means that “violence is speech”, justifying one’s own violent acts as equivalent to exercising free speech.

Narrowing terms is also common. A familiar example of this would be reducing racism to refer only to bias and prejudice from white people against non-white people (meaning that it cannot be racism when the sentiments or actions are reversed, or when it involves one non-white group against another non-white group).

You might be able to think of other examples. Or of times when you have sensed something was off in the way a word was being used but couldn’t quite put your finger on what was wrong. But these kinds of redefinitions are a real thing, and they are increasingly common — even as they increasingly tear at the fabric of our shared language, culture, and morality.

But resistance is possible. You don’t have to surrender. 

Don’t give in, and definitely don’t contribute to the problem. Stand your ground and support truth, wisdom, communication, good politics, good policies, peace, and, yes, justice when people start redefining words to suit their agendas. Don’t let them make cloudy and uncertain what used to be clear — for you, or for anyone.