"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

I meditate on the meaning and weight of this passage quite often. I felt it was appropriate to post this in a thread about quotes. The power of the right words cannot be underestimated.

*Expanded thoughts and context: I've been fascinated by the power of language ever since I was a young man. I was (and am) a voracious reader, and my passion for the written word led to a career as an editor and writer. (I'm off the clock so don't judge me if I have typos) I currently spend eight hours a day helping exceptional writers craft the perfect sentence, then I go home and read some more. I've read the Bible twice: once as a Christian and once as a lit student. I'm currently rereading it just because I love its use of language.

I didn't really focus on John 1:1 until this third pass. For some reason (possibly because I'm actively studying the Chicago Manual of Style for the first time since college) the passage didn't stick out to me until now. But when I read it again a few months ago, it struck me that of all the things I've read in the Bible, this one passage might be the truth at its most basic: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The passage, which mirrors the creation myth in Genesis where God speaks the universe into existence, conflates language and communication with deity; it quite literally says "the Word was God." The Word--language and communication--is what we worship and what has pulled us from the muck of an animal's life. In the beginning, communication enabled knowledge to live beyond the lifetime of a single person. The wheel may have been invented multiple times in multiple places by multiple people, but once we could communicate the concept, we didn't have to reinvent it every generation.

Communication, starting with stories and evolving into the written word and eventually the language of math and physics, is a force and knowledge multiplier. It is a godly power, to be able to communicate and share minds nearly instantly with another person, whether via a casual conversation or a post on hubksi. Language--the Word--is the god that propelled us out of the fringes of existence to the dominant species today. Sure, it's imperfect and we more often than not are TERRIBLE communicators, but my god. We dumb stinking apes have terraformed a planet (accidentally, of course, but still...) and landed spacecraft on celestial objects with our imperfect and clunky communication skills, and we're only getting more refined.

I believe the internet is taking us into unexplored but breathtakingly amazing territory. All the shouting back and forth and the noise and bruit of the masses--even on reddit, as much as I bitch about it--is the birth cry of humanity's next great leap forward. As barriers to communication fall, we will become orders of magnitude more efficient in transferring knowledge, and then we'll see exactly to what degree the Word is God.