"I remember going between other cars in an underpass just like this, scraping the paint on both sides of the car, and leaving the Chicago cops in the dust." He was not bragging when he said this. He just wanted my two friends and me to know how far God had brought him. Riding with him back into Chicago that November evening was as close as I ever came to knowing someone who was once in organized crime.
Two of my friends from the previous year at Toccoa Falls were now in Chicago, working days and attending evening classes at Moody Bible Institute where I was attending full time. We heard that the President of Toccoa Falls, Dr. Julian Bandy, would be speaking at a Christian and Missionary Alliance church on the west side so we went to hear him. That evening was more significant than I could have ever imagined. The senior student from Moody who was playing the organ that evening would walk up to me after a Sunday school class seventeen years later and introduce himself. We have been friends ever since but never knew each other at Moody.
After the service the three of us from Moody began to visit with Dr. Bandy. We were joined by someone who had graduated from the College division at Toccoa several years earlier. I immediately recognized his name because I had read his testimony in that small paper called Power for Living that was once included with bulletins at many churches on Sundays. An internet search at this late date does not turn up much about Ken "Pappy" Edwards so we will rely on memory. He came to Christ after having been involved in a gambling syndicate. As he drove the three of us back to Moody that November evening he related how he had driven get-away cars for other syndicate members. Soon after becoming a believer he enrolled in the Bible College division of Toccoa Falls Institute where a few years later I would be a senior in the academy. The school has been named Toccoa Falls College since 1976.
An internet search revealed only that when I met him he was with Youth For Christ in the Chicago area ministering to boys who were in trouble with the law. I recall him saying that "when the Lord saved me He took away half of my vocabulary and when I went to Toccoa, Miss Landis (the college English professor) took away the other half!" That quotation may very well be the best use of hyperbole you will ever read. Actually, the Lord (and Miss Landis) did not just take away Ken's vocabulary; He replaced it. The keynote of your conversation should not be nastiness or silliness or flippancy, but a sense of all that we owe to God. (Eph. 5:4, Phillips-New Testament in Modern English)
I do not have a testimony like Ken Edwards about working for organized crime. But I know what he meant by losing a vocabulary and gaining a new one. My maternal grandmother, whose untimely death I related in an earlier blog, told my mother about my vocabulary problems long before I started to school. I was probably around age four that day at my grandmother's home when I suddenly stopped playing with wood blocks (or whatever) and assumed a new role. She described the scene as follows: I opened a book, the way a minister opens a Bible, laid it on one of her end tables, and began to "preach". Having been taken to church since I was three weeks old and also having been taken to revival meetings, I was now about to imitate what I had seen and heard. My Grandmother said I had all the "right" words but I got them all mixed up with the way I had heard some older men use them. I referred to "hell" and "damn" and "Christ" but not quite the way a preacher did.
Oh well, every preacher or teacher has to begin somewhere. It took a more serious turn, however, during three to four of those difficult teen years. But a radical commitment to the Lord Jesus near the end of my junior year in high school resulted in some vocabulary loss and replacement. All of this comes to mind today as I reflect on the vocabulary of some professed Christians on social media.
Like Ken Edwards, some of us need more than just losing some words, we need a replacement. Thankfulness and reverential awe before the living God does wonders.
To broaden this just a bit, a knowledge of the origin (etymology) of words can be an eye opener. If believers actually knew the origin of phrases like "that sucks", "friggin", etc., etc. they might think twice before using them. Even musical terms like "jazz" (ca. 1920) and "rock" (ca. 1950) originated as euphemisms for sexual intercourse. I could go on but at some point this could all become merely prudish and not constructive. Let's go back to Ephesians 5:4 as J.B. Phillips paraphrased it (above). What we do say is ultimately just as important, even more so, than what we do not.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand . . . he touched my lips and said 'your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for'. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here am I. Send me'. He said, 'Go and tell . . . .'
(from Isaiah ch. 6)
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