Orthofoni

I wonder that we don't have the term Orthofoni in our lexicon. In these days of twitter and text (and this screen on which you are reading, your computer even), that we haven't made a wonderful advancement into the practice of "right speech."

We have orthodoxy, right doctrine.
We have orthopraxy, right practice
We have always had, probably best used in a negative sense, orthofoni.

You cannot have orthopraxy without orthodoxy. I wonder if we can, however, have right speech without either of the others embedded in our lives. I find it is easy to parrot a theological concept (especially if I can pull it right off a website with CTRL+C) into a combox and sound just perfect in a theological argument without ever internalizing the concept I'm communicating, and definitely, therefore, never putting into practice in my life, the outworking of the concept.

I can give you incredible truths from scripture without ever reading them myself. Orthofoni. I'm sure people have always been able to do this. Just memorize a set of words and spit them out to someone else without ever considering them yourself. 

Maybe dumping the SMS and the social media takes on a new value in light of this. 

If I say "I'm praying for you." in a text message, that's too easy an opportunity to just say it for the comfort value of the recipient. There's a sort of moral obligation if I say the same thing while looking you in the eye. In fact, wouldn't the inclination better be to stop and pray right there, rather than just making a meaningless statement. 

I'm not saying we can never communicate right words via modern text media. Certainly, if I tell you I'll pray, I intend to do just that. But there's a discipline in this format that I think might be just a bit more rigorous than in-person communication. I have to mean it and I have to commit to it and, finally, I have to remember to do it, if not right now, at least as soon as possible. If I fall prey to the placating statement that has no weight, am I not guilty of lying. And not just lying in the sense that I'm not going to do what I just said I would do, but lying in a deeply theological sense - I have promised to speak to God almighty on behalf of you, who need prayer. Is that not a greater evil?

This is postulation. But it's worth consideration. Similar to putting that "Christian" bumper sticker on your car and summarily speeding, cutting off traffic and generally making a jerk out of yourself, the misrepresentation of your role is apparent. But in this case, it's in a much more profound way.