Suggested reading
The Humiliation of the Word by Jacques Ellul (Eerdmans, 1985).
I said a really stupid, impossible thing last fall during a conference address. I hadn't intended it. But caught up in my usual impetuosity, I confused some customary phrases and wound up misspeaking. I regretted it fiercely and mentally kicked myself, especially the next day when my host used that untruth to introduce me. How falsehood multiplies! We live in a culture of fabrications, fibs, fraudulence, falsity — untruthful exaggerations, shadings, dealings, personalities. Advertisements use words such as stupendous and extraordinary to describe mere laundry soap, but what detergent actually fits those verbalizations?
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