These are words that are religious. They aren't inherently bad, but they might confuse the uninitiated. Even worse, it might conjure up images of a violent religion with a sordid past.
Let's go through these words one by one and talk about why we would actually be loving people to find a new way to say what we mean so people don't have an unnecessary barrier to learning about Jesus.
Prayer. Prayer can be simplified as talking to God, but I believe it is a lot more than that. Prayer is listening to the Lord, and it is also bending to what He wants. Prayer can have the unfortunate connotation of being a ritual that only the religious can pull off. For more information from Jesus on what prayer is, read Matthew 6. There is so much more to read on prayer, so comment if you want to have more information on it. My suggestion is that we refer to prayer as a "conversation with God".
Repentance. Repentance just means to turn away from something and turn towards something. It comes from the Greek word "metanoeo" just in case you care. Jesus famously preached, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near." So it's a 180. It's handing your life over to God. It's letting God turn your life around. There are so many ways to say it.
Faith. Faith can mean a few things. It can mean religion, as in "I would like to share my faith." It can mean believing something unseen. Faith is not really Biblically defined as a religion. Other religions were never defined in the Bible as being "faiths". Faith is more defined as trust. Trust has this element of believing that God is good, that He is real, that He keeps His promises, that He loves us, that He revealed Himself to us and that we are to act on this trust. Trust encompasses not just belief, but also action. After all, trusting someone has an element of win or lose. You either win because you acted in a way that trusted someone, or you act and lose because someone betrayed that trust.
Sin. Sin is a difficult thing to understand. In broader culture it means a religious offense. But for us, sin is the destructive force that is rooted in disobeying God's loving and perfect ways. It creates a vast and impassible gap between God and man, ruining the relationship that we were destined to have together. In Greek, the term is "harmartia", which means to miss the bullseye in an archer's target. But the Biblical writers took it further than that to show that sin was what brought death to a perfect world. It's about disobedience, so it is any selfish action that contradicts the two main commandments, "Love God; Love others as yourself."
Baptize. I can hear the controversy already brewing. The English word "baptism" is actually a word steeped in controversy because it isn't a translation. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, a trade language of the time, and the word for baptism is "baptidzo" in this Greek. Outside of the Bible it was a word used to describe boats that had sunk in the water. It was not translated correctly because it went against a religious tradition. Basically, someone was a coward and didn't want to translate it right.
Before the fireworks start, let me tell you a couple of things about myself. I was raised in the Lutheran church, a church that participates in infant Christening or baptism. This is a practice of sprinkling water on a child to signify their future faith in the Lord. I was sprinkled when I was 13, though, since I wasn't really born into that church. In college, I was baptized through immersion in water, and I'll tell you why. Romans 6 and Mark 1 give pretty good simple explanations. Romans 6 explains that baptism is a unity with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ - so it has to symbolize that somehow. Immersion is probably the best way to bury someone completely without killing them, as long as you raise them up out of the water... Mark 1 gives us the picture that Jesus "came up out of the water", which isn't really a picture of sprinkling water but rather of having been down in the water. At my church they just call it "dunking". It's important to understand because it is one of the things Jesus wants us to do. If you haven't been baptized, let's talk about that.
Church. The word in the Greek is "ekklesia". It just means "gathering" or "community". It does not mean a building. Most Christians were meeting in homes during the times of the New Testament, and there is no evidence that there was a separate religious building owned by the Christians. Church is the people of God living in community to journey on the mission of God together. It is within us as a group that God has chosen to express His presence in this world (Matthew 18:20, Ephesians 4). There are many wonderful expressions of who the Church really is in the New Testament, and I encourage you to research it further in the Bible. The Church, however, is also not one singular denomination (1 Corinthians 1:10-17). It is only evidenced as the collective people who have turned to God and place their total trust in Jesus Christ. Beware the word "church", because it has the added baggage of being a religious institution that murdered thousands upon thousands of people in the Middle Ages. This is still very much felt in Europe and the Middle East. This was absolutely not what God wanted from His people as Jesus commanded us to love our enemies.
Christian. It was actually a derogatory term that someone else named the believers. So if it feels derogatory to you, it feels right! :D Christian obviously comes from the word "Christ", which means "anointed one". What's "anointing"? It's sort of a pre-coronation ceremony with oil poured over the head of the person who is becoming King. I guess it's kind of like calling someone "president-elect". A Christian, though, is one who follows Jesus. We were also termed as followers of the Way, the believers, the saints, etc. There are lots of ways to say Christian without saying the word Christian. The one thing you have to watch out for is that if you claim to be a Christian, you may find yourself having to defend some of the actions of people claiming to be Christian who never really followed Jesus...
Lord. The word Christ is discussed in the previous paragraph, but the word lord has this British thing going on. It's a title that tells us someone is royal or important. However, we don't really have that in America, unless the word president works. Maybe boss is a better term. We just don't have lords and masters in America. Ideas?
I know this was a lot to read, and I promise the future posts will be shorter. But the next time you hear some religious words, don't take it for granted that you know what the words mean. Other people who never grew up in a Church culture won't know what you mean, or they might think of something bad. We can clear up our language and instead bring understanding and intrigue to our discussions if we avoid such terms.
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