Tell It Slant

These days, I’m rereading Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Eerdmans) by Eugene Peterson. The penultimate book in his excellent five-part “spiritual theology” series published between 2005 and 2010, in Tell It Slant Peterson reflects on the words Jesus used in his prayers and parables—grounded as they were in real relationships, among actual people with names, drawing on the ordinary stuff of everyday life.

Taking his title from Emily Dickinson (“Tell all the truth but tell it slant . . .”), Peterson writes, “Language—given to us to glorify God, to receive the revelation of God, to witness to the truth of God, to offer praise to God—is constantly at risk. Too often the living Word is desiccated into propositional cadavers, then sorted into exegetical specimens in bottles of formaldehyde.”

In the end, he says, we’re left with “godtalk”—a far cry from the living and life-giving language we find in the stories and prayers of Jesus.

“As we listen in on Jesus as he talks and then participate with Jesus as he prays,” Peterson continues, “I hope that together we, writer and readers, will develop a discerning aversion to all forms of depersonalizing godtalk and acquire a taste for and skills in the always personal language that God uses, even in our conversations and small talk, maybe especially in our small talk, to make and save and bless us one and all.”