If I hear the word “liberal” one more time, I might just scream. Actually, I probably have screamed once or twice when I heard the word used in a rashly generalistic way.
The word is related to “liberty”, which we use synonymously with freedom, which is a corderstone of our society, or at least it used to be. Nowadays you have social liberals and fiscal conservatives, liberal foreign policy and the label “religious conservative” being applied to Christians and Muslims alike without any regard to what the two incompatible faiths believe.
I went to a “liberal arts” college. Liberal in that sense means comprehensive and inclusive, incorporating subjects into a curriculum that weren’t in one narrow field of study. Go to a liberal arts school and you can choose from a variety of completely different majors, and any major you choose will incorporate some exposure to other fields. This distinguishes a liberal arts school from a technological institute, seminary, professional academy, and other post-secondary schools. Unfortunately too many schools and teachers are getting liberal arts backwards. Instead of seeking truth in an interdisciplinary fashion, they’re taking liberties with what they call truth, and denying the liberties of students to seek truth earnestly and personally.
A math teacher at my politically conservative liberal arts school received some odd looks when he said that he made “liberal” use of parentheses. Of course he meant that he used them a lot so that it would be difficult to misread his formulas. So liberal in this case means erring on the side of using more of something. I could put a liberal amount of oil on a machine. The Bible says to “give with liberality.” That means generously and out of true, Christ inspired love. “Liberal” social programs however are chosen by people who can give money, raise taxes, and raise their own pay so that they never bear any the burden themselves. And even more dangerously, when people dependent on social programs become a fraction of the voting population, it becomes possible to vote more and more money to be taken away from the fewer and fewer people who are not dependent on social programs. “Liberal” in the sense of Biblical generosity never meant careless. If you gave your last dollar, you knew it full well and were ready and willing. None of this hiding from a debt that increases without end. Ultimately that debt will own you, and that is not freedom.
When it comes to religion, liberal should have meant friendly, welcoming, and generous. And for one defining reason - love. Accepting of people, absolutely, because of the Lord who loved us as we are. Welcoming because He welcomed us into His kingdom. Generous because He gave His life for us. Liberal should mean sharing our feeedom from sin by sharing the Gospel. But unfortunately, liberal religion first meant opening the church to ideas that already had a home elsewhere, and has now become something that rejects the faith that founded the church that this “liberal” religion now inhabits. This usurpation doesn’t seem very liberal to me.
So I’m boycotting the word liberal. And I think that it’s the honest choice for others to do the same thing. It’ll probably take a few more words to describe your views, but what use is a one word description if it doesn’t mean anything anymore?
Someone recently said that he refers to liberals as people who think anything goes. That’s certainly true of the use of the word liberal - it means anything you want it to mean. Which is convenient if you’re trying to hide an agenda behind something that looks unintrusive.
But I suppose that if any word in the English language should be used so liberally, it might as well be… yeah, that one.