Translating “Christianese” and Exploring its Troubling Implications

February 25, 2021

Christians love their lingo. They affectionately call it “Christianese.”

But often under these cute and charming quirks of Christianity there lurks a more troubling implication. I’ve previously discussed this idea here.

Today, I’ll elaborate on this concept in the context of popular Christianese words and phrases.

Season

A season is a period of time of indeterminate length. You’ll hear Christians say things like:

• “I’m going through a season of singleness.”
• “I’m going through a season of financial struggle.”
• “I’m going through a season of questioning.”

At first glance, this might seem innocent enough. “Season” is a quaint little word that plugs in nicely with Christian culture. However, in my opinion, the term “season” is covering up for some damaging potentialities.

Turning definite time frames into “seasons” lets both Christians and God off the hook for any kind of accountability or results.

I first noticed this when I listened to older men in the church talk about their marriages. They’d say things like “we went through some difficult seasons.” I always wanted to ask them to clarify how long those “seasons” were. If they had marriage drama for like eight straight years, multiple times, then that told me I shouldn’t be getting marriage advice from them.

Likewise, if God has put you through a “season of struggling” that’s lasted 18 months, then perhaps it’s time to stop waiting on God to end your “season” and take control of your own life and do something about it.

I’m a results-oriented person. I like to know what’s going to get done and when. If someone (including me) says something will get done by a certain time, then I have a reasonable expectation that it’ll happen.

I simply couldn’t handle “God’s timing” especially as I got older. I realized that if I took action myself, the things I wanted and prayed for could be achieved by my own efforts rather than waiting on God to “bless me.”

No need for “seasons” and no need for God.

Love on

When I was a youth leader, one of the youth ministers had a habit of saying, “Let’s go love on these kids.”

It was cringey and weird. Even the youth minister himself acknowledged it sounded off. Yet he still continued to say it.

This is also used when Christian missionaries go to foreign countries for mission work—usually less developed locations. They say, “We’re going to go love on the people of [wherever].”

When I was a Christian, I didn’t think much of this (except how weird it was say “love on kids”) but after I deconverted I realized this particular language implies some not-so-great things.

It implies that “love” is something that the Christian is doing to someone else, and those things are usually unwarranted tasks that weren’t asked for, such as:

• Sharing the gospel.
• Doing acts of service.
• Praying for them.

Although rarely explicitly stated, the recipients of the “love” are usually implied to be underprivileged, less than, or in need of things that only a Christian can give them.

As a result of all this, the phrase “Love on” means the Christian has no intention of spending enough time with the recipient to actually build a legitimate and meaningful love relationship—i.e. mission trips.

Pour Into

“Pour into” implies a mentoring relationship from a “more experienced” Christian to a newer Christian.

Example: “I’ve begun discipling Greg. We meet once a week. I’m really grateful for this opportunity to pour into him.”

As I wrote in my book, I think mentorship is a fantastic thing and that everyone should have multiple mentors. However, I only began doing mentorship correctly after I’d left the Church.

The Church thinks that “length of time being a Christian” is the only requirement needed to mentor—“pour into”— someone else.

Incorrect.

My church mentors sure “poured into” me a lot of useless information about theology, what Paul “really meant” in certain difficult passages, and a healthy dose of shame for continuing to feel awkward about sharing the gospel with strangers.

My lightbulb moment came later when someone told me that the only people who should mentor me were those that I would be willing to swap life conditions with.

• Would I want to swap my financial life with this person?
• Would I want to swap my relationship life with this person?
• Would I want to swap my health with this person?

If the answer was yes, then it was okay to take that person on as a mentor to learn how to achieve their results that I desired.

And while my church mentors were great guys, they all had lives that I thought I wanted to mirror because I’d been told that was what good Christian boys should want. Later, after I deconverted, I realized that I wanted my life to look totally different.

The mentors I’ve had in my life since I deconverted don’t “pour into” me. They’re much too busy building their own awesome lives to do that. Rather, they answer my questions, give me advice based on my situation, and tweak my actions when they see I could be doing something better. No need for a time-consuming guilt and shame session.

Did you use these Christianese terms when you were still in the Church? Maybe you had some other words that I missed here. Let me know in the comments!