Simplicity Is Enough

Today’s reading: Corinthians 1:1-17

As a writing teacher, I am constantly telling my students to keep things simple. Use simple words, I say. Short sentences are best. Each time you write 1,000 words, strive to cut them to 500. If you do, more people will understand what you’ve written.

Mark Twain’s famous quote often comes up in my tutoring sessions: “Never use a dime word when a nickle word will do.” My students have probably saved themselves (and their readers) a million dollars worth of  word money over the years.

Today’s reading reminds me that this advice pre-dates Mark Twain by nearly two centuries. Our blessed teacher Paul may have been the very first advocate of  simplicity, in fact.

“For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.” (Verse 17)

When the goal of our writing is to impress others, to make ourselves seem smart — by using words such as “signage” instead of “signs,” to name just one example that has recently come up in my teaching — we are forgetting Paul’s lessons. Worse, we are forgetting The Truth.

And, as Paul points out, this is a dangerous error.  When I commit it, I am not only forgetting the truth. I am diminishing it, too.  The last part of the quotation above is worth repeating aloud, very slowly: “lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

Thanks be to God for the simple Truth. May I (and we) always remember that it is enough.