I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. That’s not to say I won’t resolve things around the New Year.
Years ago I stopped doing New Year’s resolutions. Not because I consider myself perfect, and those of you who like to kick people off pedestals will easily remind me I’m not. No; it was part of an overall package of self-reform I underwent years ago. I didn’t even come to it over New Year’s. I resolved to do several things: To stop gift-giving only for Christmas and birthdays; to stop tithing an exact 10 percent, down to the penny, to my church, but to give generously; and to make resolutions as needed, and not just at the beginning of the year or month.
Hey, if you need to quit huffing paint, do you wait for the New Year? No; it might be February, and you only have five brain cells left before your IQ drops to the point that you’ll soil yourself every time the phone rings. So you put down that spray-can now. And the same goes for any resolution: If it needs to be done, don’t put it off. Don’t procrastinate till the New Year.
And its corollary: If it doesn’t need to be done, don’t obligate yourself to do it simply because it is the New Year and everyone around you is asking what your resolutions are.
Speaking of which, people are asking me, naturally, what my resolutions are. I’m successfully resisting the temptation to say, “I’ve resolved to have you murdered and your body never found.” After all, the cops would suspect me first. But seriously: I just tell ’em I make resolutions as necessary, and not for New Year’s. If the Holy Spirit convicts me to change, I have no business putting him off till it’s convenient for me to do it. And I’m not going to arbitrarily change things simply because I have to change the calendar.
That said, I do have a new resolution, which I started last week. It’s ridiculously minor, but to some folks it’s actually ridiculously major, which is what triggered it.
I’ve resolved to capitalize less.
I told you it was ridiculously minor.
Associated Press style—the way to write that I was trained in, back in my journalism days—discourages certain forms of needless capitalization. Christians, however, are just the opposite. We capitalize everything. If it has to do with God, or the divine, we capitalize it. We capitalize his pronouns. (Example: We capitalize His pronouns.) Is that proper English? No.
Why do we do it then? Sometimes respect. Sometimes because we wouldn’t know who we were talking about unless we did capitalize the pronouns: Take a worship song where we’re singing to “you,” and the only way we’d know we were singing about Jesus instead of a boyfriend is by capitalizing his pronoun: “I want to touch You, I want to see Your face,” et cetera. I tend to get really lazy with the pronouns when it’s obvious that every capitalized “Him” refers to God, and every non-capitalized “him” doesn’t.
Sometimes for this odd theological reason: We recognize that God, who transcends gender, isn’t properly described with the pronoun “he,” but since we reserve the gender-neutral pronoun “it” for nonpersons (except when we’re answering a question or introducing someone: “It’s Pat!”) it feels weird to call God “it.” Unless of course you don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a person; then you call him “it” all you please. So as a way of subtly indicating that God is more than “he,” we call him “He.” Of course, that reason is so subtle that nobody’s ever gonna catch it or think of it unless you give this explanation. And then they’re just gonna think you’re a weirdo.
Well anyway. Some years ago I started getting out of the habit of capitalizing various things. Like “president.” Or “church.” Or “bible.” None of these things are proper names, unless they are used (as is “president”) as a title, or as part of a proper name. They don’t need to be signified by capitalizing them. When you refer to the president, your average American presumes you mean our president, which usually you do. Unless you mean a bank president, or some other country’s president, and in both cases you say so: “The Russian president” or “the president of the chamber of commerce.” Same with the bible: People presume you’re referring to the Christian bible, unless you’re referring to the Hebrew bible, or some other book like The Macintosh Bible, or specific translations like the Good News Bible. There’s rarely any conclusion about which bible you mean. Same with “church”—when you’re not specifically referring to your church, most educated Christians will assume you’re referring to Christendom, the universal church. And most uneducated Christians and pagans will be the ones confused, and think you’re talking about a building.
But man alive, when you don’t capitalize “bible,” some people lose their tiny minds. It’s as if you didn’t capitalize “God.” Technically we shouldn’t capitalize “God,” because it’s not his name. It’s his species. It’s like when he refers to Ezekiel as “son of man,” or when Jesus refers to himself as “son of man.” (Or, again with the capitalization, “Son of Man.”) Here it’s a respect thing. These folks venerate the bible, sometimes past the point of idolatry. To them it is the Holy Bible, and to drop its capitals is a sign of disrespect or dishonor. It’s a slight. It’s as if I didn’t take my hat off to pray.
It’s a little thing. And people defend these little things by claiming that they’re symptomatic of a larger trend towards disrespect and anarchy. So they figure if you treat the symptom, maybe you’ll dodge the problem. Except, as any doctor will tell you, some things are the symptoms of multiple problems: A high temperature could mean all sorts of things, and you don’t treat all those things with the same meds. Does capitalizing the bible mean you respect the bible? No; respect for the bible means studying it, not taking it out of context, and trying to apply the scriptures to your life. It does not mean quoting it to make yourself feel warm fuzzy feelings over the happy verses, or to use other quotes to bash things you don’t like, or to swear on it when you’re telling the truth, or other such cultural things. Someone who neglects the proper use of bible, yet insists that I capitalize “Bible,” only means they’re one of those dingbats who thinks you fix dry rot with a coat of paint.
In any case, I was reading a blog recently. I do that, y’know. Sometimes I skip the comments, ’cause (as is the case on YouTube or many news sites) the commenters are morons. Sometimes I don’t, ’cause on certain blogs the commenters are definitely not morons. Sometimes I comment, and whether I do so as a moron or not, I leave to your judgment. The discussion du jour was on respect, and some fool commented that as far as he was concerned, whatever you do, capitalize “Bible.” It makes him nuts otherwise.
This sentiment reminds me of those folks who think they’re so clever when they don’t capitalize “Satan.” Ha-ha, that’ll get the devil back for all those people who won’t capitalize “God.” It’s petty and childish and unbefitting someone who’s supposed to demonstrate God’s grace. Technically “Satan” isn’t a proper name either; the Aramaic word satan means “accuser,” so that’s really its job description, not its name. But just as “God” is used in many ways as God’s proper name, and to distinguish him from any other god, “Satan” is used in many ways as the devil’s proper name, and unless you’re gonna use “satan” in the same way you would “accuser” (i.e. “I feel really oppressed by the satan today”), best to just keep it capitalized.
The whole Christian capitalization thing, really, is ridiculous. But I get caught up in it myself, and need to stop wasting everyone’s time on it, including my own. So I’ve resolved. Coincidentally, in time for New Year’s Day, but I’m not waiting till Sunday; I’ve started already. Again, why wait?