"Church hurt"

and why words matter

My Junior English teacher always used to talk about the “bon mot,” which literally means “good word.” She would ask us: “The word you’ve chosen on the page, maybe it is accurate, maybe it works, but is it the best, the right, the fullest word you can use to express what you’re expressing?” “Find the bon mot.” I still tell myself this when I am writing.

I love words. I always have. The more I’ve learned about the brain, the more I’ve come to understand the power they hold over us. Language is loaded. And we load it further. We out our experiences onto words, we heap other’s experiences onto them as well, and we shove so much meaning and so many memories into the smallest of words that by the time they’re spoken over us, a whole universe of meaning fits inside a few curved lines on a page.

The words “Church hurt” used to work for me. When I was younger, when things felt clearer or simpler, those words seemed like they could accurately carry the weight and summarize the pain that people around me had experienced within communities of faith. They would come to me with their past wounds, their “church hurt,” and I would understand - I thought - what they meant by that.

Those words don’t work for me anymore. At some point, they became - not just too small to hold the experiences they needed to carry, but also - inaccurate. They do not appear to be the “bon mot.”

I have a few problems with using those words to summarize the pain, sadness, or wounds experienced by those with power in a church context.