HIGHFALUTIN V. SIMPLE

Well, how would YOU illustrate
"highfalutin"? This fun figure
 humorously illustrates its opposite.

Back to school time!  And though that's in my distant past, I still remember the dread and agony of jumping through college admissions exams like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).  I had a “Top Ten” GPA in high school (my B's were in my nemesis, P.E.) so didn't think those standardized tests for college admissions would be too worrisome. Until I opened the test booklet. Math! Why had I avoided advanced calculus! I guessed. And guessed again! Not surprising, my math scores were more Death Valley than Mount Everest. Vocabulary! Were those test words ones that people actually used? Or were they borrowed from some tribal language?

Just for fun, I recently started a list of highfalutin words (oops, there's one) that  aren't part of ordinary language. Okay: “highfalutin” denotes “pompous, pretentious or overly complicated.” It's typical of people who flaunt (“to display ostentatiously on impudently, to parade”) with allegedly “highfalutin” diction (even invented negative words) to project a bogus superior image. And speaking of speaking styles, some highly-educated folks are apt to fulminate (“express vehement protest”) against some teenage slang (“like, uh, hey, yo!”). In doing so, they fustigate (“beat with a club, or punish or criticize severely”) when clear and proper language disintegrates into cliches or idioms. (Am I really using these hundred-dollar-words correctly?)

Sometimes we make simple things too complicated. The Gospel, for example. In 1962 renowned Bible teacher Karl Barth was on a lecture tour of the U.S., speaking at a chapel at the University of Chicago. When a student asked Barth if he could summarize his life's work in a sentence, Barth replied, yes, then quoted a song he learned as a child: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”(1)

Another life-skill needing simplification is showing that Jesus loves us and those around us, even those tied in knots over confusion of what it means to love like Him. The aged apostle John, despite all the teaching he heard and preached himself, wonderfully distilled the Christian life to this simple yet profound command:

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:18).

There it is—the Bible's SAT: Simple Actions & Truth.

(1) Did Karl Barth Really Say “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know….?” | Roger E. Olson (patheos.com)