Welcome to a breakpoint in a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

On May the 28th, 1843, Noah Webster died in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a teacher, a lawyer, an ardent

supporter of the American Revolution, and a deeply committed Christian. In 1783, hoping to

separate America from its cultural dependence on Europe, Webster published an American spelling guide to introduce the differences in spelling between American English and British English, many of which still exist today.

He then published a dictionary in 1806, which he expanded later into the first full American dictionary published in 1828.

Now Webster's concern to create a uniquely American identity through the proper spelling

and defining of words might seem odd in our image-driven culture today, but that's because we often underestimate the importance and the power of words.

Words reflect and shape culture in profound ways.

For example, in his 1828 dictionary Webster defined discernment as the power or faculty of the mind

by which it distinguishes one thing from another as truth from falsehood, virtue from vice.

Also, acuteness of judgment,

the power of perceiving differences of things or ideas,

and their relations and tendencies.

And then he added to his definition, and I quote, he added to his definition and I quote the errors of youth often proceed from the want of discernment and quote

well in contrast today's online Miriam Webster Dictionary defines discerns

discerns what is obscure or as an act of perceiving or discerning

something. What's gone entirely here is any sense of distinguishing between things, especially the role that

moral sense plays in the process of discernment. This not so subtle shift reflects a cultural

shift, one towards moral relativism.

Now sometimes new meanings are merely reflected in our dictionaries, but other times they're imposed.

When they are, we get a kind of George Orwell's newspeak.

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