“Euphemania”

I have recently stumbled upon an interesting book, filled with insight into our peculiarly American culture and way of life: Euphemania, by Ralph Keyes (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010).

The title of this book tells you precisely what to expect inside. The book describes a kind of mania (mānēə, “An excessive enthusiasm or desire”) – in this case, a mania for euphemism (yüfəmizəm, “A mild or indirect word or expression for one too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing”). The book describes our tendency to speak nicely, when speaking plainly seems unkind.

It is not difficult to think of examples. Our culture is full of them.

Americans do not “die”: they “kick the bucket.” They do not use the “toilet”: they much prefer the “men’s room” (or the “ladies’”). My own handwriting, truth be told, is downright spastic – yet I would not say so openly. “Distinctive,” maybe, or perhaps “legibility impaired.” You get the idea. Our culture and language are full of euphemistic workarounds. When the plain old facts seem jangly or troubling, we repackage them.

The results, sometimes, are just plain silly. (Are you tired of being “short”? Try “vertically challenged”!) At other times, however, the results can be disastrous.

Americans have seemed particularly susceptible to high-risk loans in recent years – because they are not for us, precisely, “high-risk.” They are “subprime,” we tell ourselves – just a whisker short of optimal, presumably. Who would buy them otherwise?

Americans are susceptible to high-risk social behaviors of every variety – from drunkenness to casual sex. We camouflage our deviance by doublespeak. “Drunk?” Maybe not: just a bit “jolly.” “Promiscuous?” I don’t think so: think “free spirited,” instead. A “jolly free spirit” doesn’t sound so bad.

Abortion is not an issue of life and death: it is “reproductive choice.” Torture is not the moral issue you might have thought: it is modestly “enhanced interrogation.” Sometimes a coup is not precisely a “coup,” as we have learned in Egypt in recent months. It may be nothing more than a “roadmap” or maybe a “transitional period.”

Our verbal evasions tell us a good deal about who we are and what we think important. Why do we minimize economic risk and maximize economic potential? Why do we obfuscate clear references to death? Why do we take the blood out of abortion and the pointiness out of torture, and so on? It’s easy enough to understand. Pointy, deviant, murderous things are difficult to talk about: we defuse them by euphemism. They are easier to handle that way.

In the church we are no better. We may be more euphemanic, in fact, than people in other settings.

The language of the Bible is far pointier, after all, than anything you find on the evening news. The Bible describes everlasting life – and everlasting death, too. It describes sin deep and dark enough to nail Jesus to the cross and lay him in a tomb – then life astounding enough to break open the tomb and annihilate death forever. This is language that makes euphemanics cringe: it is filled with the lost and dying, on the one hand, and the lavishly forgiven on the other. It presents us with the extraordinary crisis of sin and God’s own extravagant solution. And in the bargain it presents us with the radical call to faith. Everything, everything hangs in the balance.

The Bible introduces us to Jesus. “All things came into being through him” (John 1:3). “All things hold together” in him (Colossians 1:17). He is the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). And God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

If you are lost, you might get this: here you will see Good News. But if you are “momentarily disoriented”? Or “temporarily mistaken”? Or “provisionally astray or confused”? In that case, the language of the Bible will seem a bit excessive.

There is a place in civil society for euphemism, I am sure, when properly employed. But “euphemania” is seldom helpful, I think – especially in spiritual matters. It is no kindness to mask the gravity of sin. It is no wisdom to euphemize its Remedy.

The Remedy for sin, after all, has an explicit name. “Salvation comes in no other way,” St. Peter reminded us long ago. “No other name has been or will be given to us by which we can be saved, only this one” (Acts 4:12, The Message). The Remedy for sin has no workaround, you see. He is only, only Jesus.