The single most interesting idea I encountered this semester came from an English class. This idea is all about words, or, more specifically, the formative power of words. Here it is: God’s words shape reality, and so do ours.

We’re all familiar with God’s creative past. He shaped reality, and he did it by speaking. For instance, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). God’s word is more than a mere statement; it is synonymous with creative action.

Being made in his image, our speech echoes God’s. When we speak, we are also shaping reality. Our spoken words create perceptions, influence attitudes, change minds and inspire actions. Our words are undoubtedly creative, but unlike those of God, they are not inherently so. Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes this distinction: “For us,” he says, “the connection between imperative and indicative can be thought of always only as a continuum, mostly within the framework of the cause-and-effect schema.” When we speak, there is a creative aftermath, but the speech itself is not equated with the new reality.

A corollary of this distinction is that, whereas God has no maker, we are created creators. If, as Bonhoeffer reasons, God is never the creation, only the Creator, then “there is no continuum that would bind him and his creation together as one reality.” All that remains to tie our reality to God is his word. That’s Bonhoeffer’s point.

In Colossians, Paul writes that “[Christ] is before all things, and in him all things hold together,” and the gospel of John begins by declaring, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

Christ is the Word, and the Word mediates between us and God. Thus the Word is the ultimate creative force, forging a link between our reality and the voice of God.