Our stories are precious things. They flow through us—and out of us—in rivulets of nouns and verbs and all the other fragments of human speech that give life its form. Language is how we enter the world—both literally as well as figuratively. The Christian Bible tells us that “by the word of the Lord” creation was given shape and purpose.
As bearers of the Creator’s image, human beings share this capacity for speech. So much so that evolutionary biology admits that “speech is so essential to our concept of intelligence that its possession is virtually equated with being human.”
But why?
We can never fathom this question so long as we insist on seeing life through only a material lens. We have to look deeper, with eyes attuned to the subtle contours of the human soul. For indeed there is a soulishness about us, a quality that takes shape in our physical world even as it transcends the boundaries of earth and bone and skin.
Language, therefore, is a fundamental part of what makes us human. We rightly equate silence with isolation. Both are enemies of God’s grand design.