15 Christianese Religious Words Translated

It's called Christianese:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H-29cJSuv8&w=420&h=315]

I feel like one large problem preventing people from understanding religious ideas is that we use religious words. I believe if we can start speaking more plain English then the Christian faith will be much more effectively understood by people both inside and outside the faith.

Sometimes, as shown in the video, concepts are portrayed by phrases or even in nonverbal ways through actions or ceremonies. Other times ideas are condensed into single words. We will deal with some of those individual words in this article. Here are 15 commonly used religious words translated into plain talk:

1: Pray - to communicate with God.
2: Holy - superior, good or displaying God's nature. These are all synonymous under the Christian view.
3: Blasphemy - slander of God.
4: Miracle - something which is done by God.
5: Wisdom - ability to make good decisions.
6: Worship - to express devotion and admiration.
7: Blessing - Something good.
8: Curse - Something bad.
9: Saint - (3 definitions)
A) Technically, anyone who believes in the Gospel of Christ is a saint according to the bible.
B) When used as a title the word generally implies a particularly well known person of the faith and implies that they are a good role model or leader. It is often capitalized under these circumstances.
C)The Roman Catholic Church uses the title Saint a little differently. They use it to refer to someone they believe is in heaven according to certain tests such as they have to have performed a miracle during their life.
10: Sanctification - the process of getting better.
11: Sin - bad behavior.
12: Gospel - the story the birth and life of Jesus. Especially as recorded in his 4 biographies known as the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which form the first part of the New Testament in the Bible.
13: Salvation - safety from God's punishment of sin.
14: Spirit - The spirit is the part of a person not accounted for in the purely physical realm. It includes the consciousness and the will, perhaps intelligence and preference as well, but some of those will be better characterized as belonging to the soul, which means the mental faculty which is nonetheless attributable to biology.
15: God - An eternal, self-sufficient, perfect and mysterious entity which is described in and the protagonist of the Bible.