We Christians have invented a lot of petty and stupid ways to judge our fellow Christians for how devout they are. That’s what these Expectations articles are about, y’know. We don’t look for fruit of the Spirit. We look for this crap. So from time to time I get judged for not meeting my fellow Christians’ expectations. So do you. Isn’t it tiresome?
One of the little litmus tests is how we do on Christian capitalization. I get rebuked for this on a frequent basis: I don’t capitalize Christian things enough. I don’t capitalize “bible”—as if people aren’t gonna know I’m talking about the bible when I do so. I don’t capitalize God’s pronouns. I don’t capitalize “church” and “liturgy” and “sacrament.” I do capitalize Satan.
Because I follow the rules of 21st century grammar. I know; it’s a dying practice. I read a lot of news, and regularly catch reporters misusing apostrophes. People love to use ’em for plurals. Love love love. Even though they shouldn’t. When in doubt, don’t. But I digress.
Now under the rules of 16th century grammar, you capitalize everything you wanna emphasize, which is why the U.S. Constitution and our Declaration of Independence are full (or to do it 16th-century style, Full) of capitalizations. But we stopped doing that in the 19th century, and the only reason Christians kept it up is because we liked old books. We oughta still like old books… but that’s another digression.
Under 21st century grammar, we capitalize proper names, and titles when we address people by ’em. We capitalize Jesus, of course; we capitalize Lord when we address him as such, but when we refer to him as our lord, we needn’t. Christians will, ’cause they don’t realize there’s a difference, and figure you always capitalize lord. And yeah, when we’re referring to YHWH, the LORD, yeah we do. But “lord” is his title, not a proper name. “God” is his species, not a proper name; calling him “God” is like when he refers to Ezekiel as “Son of Man.” Ek 2.1
Like I said, Christians don’t realize there’s a difference, and get all bent out of shape when people refer to “god,” as in “The guru claims to be an expert on god.” (Y’realize if the guru is Hindu, of course you wouldn’t capitalize “god,” ’cause we could be talking about any of their gods.) To the Christian’s mind, it doesn’t matter if “god” is only God’s species: You capitalize it! Always. It’s not lowercase-G “god,” and lowercasing God’s title disrespects him, doesn’t it? Just like how it disrespects us when people won’t capitalize “human,” right?
Just like how disrespects us when other people won’t capitalize our names, right? …Wait, do people do this as a way to disrespect one another? I mean, unless they’re being a little creative with graphic design, like movie credits which put everything in lowercase: Who lowercases people’s names so as to insult them? And when we see it done to our own names, who among us is so sensitive we identify this as a slight? Does it ever occur to anybody to consider this a big deal? Or an insult?
Yet you’ll actually find Christians do this to the devil. Seriously.
Now the things we call it—“devil” and “Satan”—are actually both titles. We don’t know its proper name. (No, it’s not “Lucifer.” That’s a misinterpretation… and another title, while we’re at it.) As titles, we don’t actually need to capitalize ’em either, unless we’re addressing the devil by its title—“Listen, Devil,” or “Listen, Accuser”—but Christians traditionally treat “Satan” as this particular satan’s proper name. Yet Christians, just to stick it to Satan a little, like to lowercase it where inappropriate. Yeah, like this gets it back for convincing people to use lowercase-G’s on God. It’s petty of us.
It also freaks Christians out when people capitalize “God” to refer to another religion’s god. Like Aten or Wotan or Vishnu—we don’t refer to these beings as “Gods,” but “gods.” Zeus isn’t a God, but a god. Properly, YHWH is a god too, but to honor him we insist on making him always, always an uppercase-G God, ’cause he’s the God.
Mix any of these customary rules up, and people are gonna doubt your salvation. Even if it’s an honest mistake, or a pagan editor removing all our sacred capitalization.
Yeah, it’s already kinda silly. But it goes further. A lot further. Follow me down the rabbit hole, will you?