I AND THOU [9-30-24]

 BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—I AND THOU [9-30-24]

 

When Helen and I were in college, Martin Buber’s I and Thou was popular. He objected to the objectification of persons in modern society. It was published in 1923 and translated from German to English in 1937.

In 1923, he was already aware that German society could be twisted into a nightmare by someone like Hitler, because of the objectification of persons. We need, he said, to treat persons as “thous.”

When I first started preaching, I did my best to learn how to pray in thee/thou language, essentially the King James language of the Bible. If you went to church and Sunday School, you already had a “feel” for it, because of The Lord’s Prayer, and Bible readings, and hymns. I was pretty good at praying with thees and thous, but it didn’t seem right. I thought of it only as outmoded language; I didn’t consider its depth.

So, unfortunately, I am responsible for replacing Thou language in the church with the modern You. Well, not I alone, but I was one of the first preachers in SoInd to use You language in public prayer. I know because I got some grief from older preachers. They thought I was being heretical. I just thought I was in the Protestant tradition of Luther and Wesley, who insisted that the church must speak in the language of the people.

Also I didn’t want to be like my contemporary, Bob Weaver, who got twisted up by KJ [King James] language. Bob once prayed in Sunday worship, “O Lord, we pray that we might be thine and thou be ouren…” [1]

Now I regret the replacement of thee language with you language. Instead of replacing thee with you, we should have made it our mission to replace you with thee.

To this day, most churches recite The Lord’s Prayer in KJ language. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” And we still sing a lot of hymns in their original KJ. “Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way…”

KJ language was precise. It spoke of persons as individuals instead of part of a conglomerate. You is either one or a bunch. Who knows how many? Ye, on the other hand is precise. It means more than one, like youuns or y’all.

Homogenization of language leads to the objectification of persons, and vice versa. Which is why I don’t much care for replacing she and he with they. I understand the need. I know there are folks who don’t identify as either a she or a he. People have a right to be called what they want. That’s the opposite of objectification.

But isn’t self-objectification still objectification? Doesn’t homogenization lead to a loss of personal identity? If you are a they instead of a she or a he, aren’t you being lost in the pronoun crowd?

Well, it’s too much for me. Do as thou wilst. I pray that thou shalt be called whatsoever thou desirest.

John Robert McFarland, Thee, Thou, Thine

1] Bob was the newly ordained young associate preacher in a large church in the city where I was campus minister. He had a penchant for language snafus. After a particularly long communion service, instead of pronouncing the benediction as “Arise and go in peace,” he proclaimed, “Arise and go to sleep.” He also once prayed that God would “forgive us our falling shorts.”