In her recently book “At a loss for words,” Carol Off, who is a former CBC Radio host of “As It Happens” is warning about the erosion of the integrity of language. She believes what we say often does not mean it is supposed to mean any more. She is afraid that the erosion of the Canadian consensus may have begun. Pontius Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” There is no answer recorded in the Bible. Does that mean it is still a question? Is truth a fake news when it is inconvenient? It all depends?

I once lived and worked in the country where spoken word carried more weight than action. They say: “You don’t pray for the opposition party. When you pray for someone you don’t like, it means you are a hypocrite OR a liar. A case in point, a boy had a fight with another boy and stabbed him who survived with a superficial wound. The village chief sentenced him six lashes. The same magistrate sentenced another boy a much heavier punishment for verbally insulting an older woman. The boy was imprisoned for a few months. He said, “Superficial wound will heal. But a hurtful word will leave a scar on the soul.”

I hate to see beautiful words squandered. Corrupted language can poison air and create toxic environment. When a demagogue employs poisonous language, it can cause devastating damage to the nation’s soul. Dictators have done it and led gullible masses to their own demise as Hitler and Mussolini did. And now a demagogue and a pathological liar in the South of the boarder is following the examples of those devils incarnate who led people to their own demise. Where is a shiny example of the Republic?

Let me to pick one word “love.” It is very powerful and profound. It is also abused so often that the result is confusion. Few people bother to sort it out. When I watch the scene of hysterical mob cheering Adolf Hitler and other figures like them, I see the history repeating itself in the South of the boarder. People are refusing to notice and clean the contaminated language. Love word is a real problem because I is loaded, powerful, and ubiquitous. Let me think about it comparing it with the examples of other languages.

There is no one word in Japanese what we call in English “love.” Neither is there one word for love in the Koine Greek chosen by the writers of New Testament. I think we should qualify the love word with adjectives to avoid misuse and misunderstanding. For example, “love” described by St. Paul should be “charity.” King James Bible got it right as a translation of the original Greek “agapeh.” Otherwise it should be used with a qualifier like “God’s Love” or “self sacrificing love.”

My father told me what happened in his first Bible study class as a student teacher at a Christian Girls High School. It was during the 1920 Japan. He proposed to discuss love. He asked a girl what she thought about love. Her face turned red and took a long time to answer. Finally she said, “Isn’t it “himegoto” – the matter that must be kept secret? During those days in Japan there was no boy-girl contact permitted without chaperon. Marriages were arranged by match-makers. Love affairs were clandestine and rare. Japanese people did not say the word “love” without qualifier like “merciful” or “parental” before the noun “love.” Christian idea of “love” had no place except to mean “charity” as appeared in the King James Bible. 1st Corinthians Chapter 13 does not say “love.” In stead what spoke about is closer to “God’s love.” For English speakers, it may come as a shock that there is no one word for “love” in the Bible. In the original Bible in Greek there is no one word for love. Today “love” still is in the same conundrum mainly because of inadequate translation.

One word translated in English “love” comes from at least three Greek words. The word we use most often when we say “love” in English today comes from Greek word “Epithumia. ” It is translated as “desire” or “covet.” It’s the word often abused by young boys with only one thing in mind talking to young women. Obviously, the Biblical love does not mean that.

The word we think it means sexual love does not mean what we think it means. The word is “Eros.” Our common use of the word has sexual connotation. But in Greek, Plato used it differently. For Plato eros is the desire to be perfect. What we think means sex is another Greek word “Epithumia.”