July 2017

I have found there are some words that people, even good, upstanding, Christian people, simply dislike.  Some of these are Sanctify, Meekness, Fear, and Submission, in any form – submit, submissive.  Words about submitting seem to be especially disliked by women.

When you look at the words from a Biblical perspective, they are all strong words.

Sanctify: to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate; to purify or free from sin (Dictionary.com).  I think it may be that sanctify sounds like such a righteous word.  When you look at the definition, it’s a great concept.  If we sanctify our time with the Lord, we are setting it apart.  If we sanctify a marriage, we are stating our goal to keep it pure from sin.  None of this is bad, yet the word sanctify gets a bad reputation.

Maybe people confuse the word with sanctimonious, which means making a show of being morally superior to other people (dictionary.com).  Sanctify is a good, strong, Biblical concept.  Sanctimonious is not.

Have you ever thought you’d like to be more humbly patient or docile?  I think, especially after an argument, many of us wish we could be more docile.  Well, humbly patient and docile is the definition of meekness (Dictionary.com).  How is that a bad thing?  And in The Beatitudes, given during Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He tells us the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).  So why do we look down on the meek?  It’s a good Biblical attitude.

Fear means respect. From the Pentateuch through Malachi in the Old Testament, when we are told to Fear the Lord, we are being told to respect the Lord.  Think how frustrated people get when we feel we are being disrespected, and we really are not worthy of respect the way the Lord is.  How much worse when we fail to respect, or fear, the Lord.  Fear is a good word here.

Submit mean to accept or yield to a superior force or to the authority or will of another person. (Dictionary.com). Obey means to comply or behave in accordance (Dictionary.com).

When I speak, either in the business world or in Christian settings, I am surprised how strongly people, especially women, react to these words.  Once while giving my seminar, LOL – Listen, Obey, and Learn, I was asked mid-way through the event to stop using the word obey, because it set a woman’s “teeth on edge.”  I completed the seminar with every possible synonym.  Another woman approached me afterwards to say I had been obedient in not using the word again. I appreciated her humor.

Consider the people we are taught to submit to and obey: parents, teachers, pastors – all people who should have our best interests at heart.  As adults, when we find ourselves in these positions, don’t we want the best for the people we ask to obey and submit to us?

These terms tend to have a common theme: humility. We know, Biblically, that pride, the opposite of humility, comes before destruction (proverbs 16:18) but humility comes before honor (Proverbs 18:12).  In our lives, of course none of us wants destruction!  We would happily welcome honor, or as some versions suggest, blessings.  These words, which too often carry negative connotations, are all, in actuality, very positive terms.