Here are some relevant exerpts:
Relationship: Here is a word that is used to qualify, justify and honey coat just about every nefarious, sleazy or reprehensible union between just about anybody and anything. The word is used today to describe everything from marriages to the on-goings between a farmer and his barn animals. This is an overused word that has elevated some of the worst unions in history to a place they hardly deserve.
Love: The word love has but one general definition in the English language but in contrast there are over forty definitions for it in the Greek. Unfortunately definitions for this word are almost always unknown, ignored or drawn from only the basest and lowest of human response. Usually it is defined by physical attraction. If it goes beyond that it wouldn't be intelligence that got it moved up the ladder but mostly time. That is, the longer a love has existed the less it requires pure physical attraction to exist. The Greeks speak of three distinct types of love, physical, brotherly and Godly. In America we don't get that fancy. It is a great loss that we do not ponder the glib use of this majestic little word, and the few who do have given it the value that turns our heads, pricks our ears, provokes great writers, enables hero soldiers and motivates the most notable philanthropists of our nation.
Fun: The word fun has become a three letter giant in the American psyche. It would seem that it can cover any kind of bad youthful behavior, adult excess, or fickle feathered phantasm that festers in any fool, foul up or clown on the continent. We seem to think that we have a right, no a mandate to have this poorly defined aspect of American behavior ready to engage us at the freeing of any moment we are not doing the other thing Americans do when not engaged in fun…work. It is the driven pursuit of fun that causes others around the world to think of Americans as mindless party animals who don't take life very serious.
Psychiatrist: A newspaper headline over twenty five years ago in a New Orleans newspaper read…Psychiatry Fast Replacing Religion in America. I could never get that headline out of my mind and now twenty five years later I must say it is largely true. The price for this transition from religion to psychiatry has been costly and disheartening at best. In the interim many headlines and reports have told us that psychiatrists have the highest rate of suicides and the lowest success rate for helping their patients than all others in the medical profession.
Religion: Now we can look at the word used for what was supposed to be replaced by modern psychiatry. Religion if nothing else is an enigma. The word has almost as many definitions as the people you ask to define it. Some people say all religions are like roads that in the end will all lead us to God. Some say that religion is a word that means different things to different people but in the end they are all praying to or worshipping the same God. Oh really! I am a Christian and I know when I worship God I am not worshipping the God who will give me fifty virgins if I go hurt someone who doesn't believe like me. To others the word religion conjures pictures of the austere life with strict rules and long hard lists of dos and don'ts. Most people think they could turn to the Bible for many good definitions for religion. You can't. The word religion is used only five times in the entirety of scripture and only once is it given a definition. James 1:27 Religion is thought to be anything from the adoration of nature to dancing over a bed of coals.
Romance: If you asked the next ten people what their definition of romance would be you will undoubtedly get ten very different but very personal definitions. It is perhaps one of those words that most people think is only open to a personal definition. Romance then is an embellishment that is used to spice the furtherance of the real stuff…love, remember that word? As far as I know romance has not yet been found to produce world peace or build the world's tallest skyscraper but it holds its own for what it is supposed to do, with or without a universally clear definition
Commercials: Here is a word many people love to hate. Television, radio, internet and all other media bombard us with messages, ads and pictures about everything from soap to potatoes. We really haven't abused the word commercials but with or without a succinct definition we have greatly abused what the word has come to mean, interruption.
About the Author:
Rev Bresciani is from New Orleans La
