Digital Babel

I have been thinking about the currency of words – how we value them, spend them, jingle them in our pockets, get into debt.  Words in themselves have no intrinsic meaning (onomatopoeia aside), just the meanings we collectively choose to assign and the relationships they build with each other: syntactically, synergistically.  In all this relativity, how do we find truth? 

If words are like money, abstract concepts existing only because there is a consensus of people willing to believe, then what happens when there is a crisis of confidence in meaning?  Following the recent financial crises around the world, we understand more clearly now that money is a question of relativities:  exchange rates, interest rates, stock market values.  Our wealth becomes arbitrary, subject to sudden dips as the citizens of Cyprus have unfortunately discovered.   Words are slippery devils.  Are we meaning what we say or saying what we mean? 

A cloud within a web encircles the planet, squeezing it smaller as a child squashes a ball of plasticine, overcoming laws of time and space.  With the touch of a button, the time-space continuum is subverted; messages are delivered around the world faster than the speed of light.  First the Word, then words, finally a web of words:  multiple and opposing incantations, destroying certainty, diluting truth.  A digital Babel. 

How do we orientate ourselves among the multiple meanings of our postmodern world?  How can we understand our wealth and our worth in a world of relativities?  I believe it is by knowing the one Word which gives meaning to everything else.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1, NIV).  Jesus is the Word.  He is our treasure, and in Him we can find our worth.