The abuse of words

I have enjoyed the discussion on the last blog entry, but I do have something that probably won’t produce much discussion, but I need somewhere to vent it. I am about to share a pet peeve of mine. I really don’t like it when I hear people use words in Greek or Hebrew so make them sound like they know what they are talking about...when in reality they are abusing the words. This might be boring to some of you but please bear with me as I make a quick point. A lot of times I hear people making huge distinctions between words in the Greek and deriving huge theological conclusions from those differences. I came across one recently and despite the risk of offending anyone I am still going to use it as an example. Someone was trying to demonstrate the difference between the Greek word rhema and logos. Those are often both translated word in the New Testament. They are two different words as you can tell from the spelling, and there is a slightly different nuance to those words. I will concede these two points, but they are so similar they could almost be considered synonyms. Let me give you an example in English. What would you do if someone was in a discussion and you said that you had an idea. As you were explaining that idea to the person you also referred to the idea as a thought. At this point the person stops you and tells you that they are confused because you are using thought and idea interchangeable and they are two different words. You would think they were an idiot (I would anyways). Yes, the words thought and idea are two different words with different nuances in meaning, but they are so similar that they can be used interchangeably. To force a huge distinction on the words would not make sense. Let me get to my point. Why is it that we think it is acceptable to do that with Bible Words? There are times when the distinction is important and the words do have significantly different implications, but not always. I guess that I wanted to throw the thought out there that just because someone throws Greek words around doesn’t mean that you have to accept all of it. While you may not know Greek, feel free to come and ask me and I can lead you to some resources that can help (For example Strong's concordance or Young’s Analytical Concordance). I would even be willing to look up the words for you in a Greek dictionary and let you read the difference in meaning yourself. Sorry that I vented, but it was really bugging me and I had to get it off my chest. I guess I would summarize it in one quick point by saying, We need to be careful with Scripture to make sure that we are not twisting it or abusing it.