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...Christians understand that words matter. Even as being made in the image of God includes, at least in part, that we are linguistic creatures; we are able to form words, to say words, to write words, and understand words, indeed to be addressed by a divinely revealed word. We also understand that language matters in ways that are deeply revealing, deeply revealing in moral terms. After all, as many have pointed out, one of the things we have to note is the substitution in terms of moral language for a euphemism. As has been pointed out during the 20^th century for instance, you can trace a moral revolution in the language that is used to describe the same thing. Something for instance that was first called ‘adultery’ then became known as an ‘affair’ and then later simply ‘extramarital sex.’

What we’re talking about here is the fact that sin is often rationalized by the process of using a euphemism, by euphemizing it. If we call it something else we can sometimes even trick ourselves into thinking it is something else. Of course we’re not just talking about sexual sins, this can be done with the sin of pride or the sin of gluttony or any other sin – frankly it can be done with almost any aspect of human living. But when it comes to defining evil that’s where euphemisms become most dangerous and most revealing and that’s where we better pay the most attention.

That’s why an article that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal is urgent from the Christian worldview even though most of the people who might be first immediately concerned with the article will be foreign-policy experts and politicians. Here’s the headline, White House Labels Taliban and Armed Insurgency Not Terrorists, it’s by Byron Tau, again writing yesterday at the Wall Street Journal. As Tau writes,

“The White House is drawing a sharp distinction between Afghanistan’s Taliban and the Islamic State — describing the Taliban as an ‘armed insurgency.’”

When the White House spokesman was asked yesterday about a plan by the nation of Jordan to swap a would-be suicide bomber for a Jordanian pilot being held by Islamic state militants, the White House reiterated the long-standing policy, says Tau, of the United States to refuse negotiations with terrorists. Eric Schultz, White House spokesman, said yesterday,

“Our policy is that we don’t pay ransom, that we don’t give concessions to terrorist organizations,”

He went on to say,

“This is a longstanding policy that predates this administration and it’s also one that we communicated to our friends and allies across the world,”

Well that’s one of those statements that means less than first meets the eye because the whole point of the Wall Street Journal article – and the whole point of world attention now to the White House spokesman’s statement – is not so much the statement which was indeed communicated – that the United States does not negotiate nor pay ransom to terrorist – but the fact that it all comes down to how the White House defines a group as a terrorist organization or, as the White House spokesman revealed yesterday when referencing the Taliban, merely an “armed insurgency.”

Now as I said, this gets to be very interesting because last year the White House was involved in a prisoner swap with the Taliban in Afghanistan – you’ll remember that that included US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The White House spokesman said yesterday, we do not negotiate with terrorist organizations nor pay ransom to terrorist organizations, but the Taliban isn’t a terrorist organization. The problem is the United States government still says that it is. As a matter fact, even as the US does not list the Taliban on the foreign terrorist organization list run by the State Department, it does list the Taliban as a terrorist organization on its separate “specially designated global terrorism list.” It has done so since 2002. And the National Counterterrorism Center – remember, that’s also the same government otherwise known as the United States government – also lists the Taliban  presence in Afghanistan on a map of global terrorism.

Furthermore, and horrifyingly, let me just remind you that it was the Taliban in Pakistan that murdered 145 people, including mostly young teenage students most of them boys involved in a private high school in the nation of Pakistan just before Christmas of last year. It was universally recognized as one of the worst acts of terrorism in the year 2014. But the White House now says the Taliban isn’t the terrorist group; if it were a terrorist group we couldn’t negotiate with them. Since we are negotiating with them, they must not be a terrorist group.

Now my point in this case is not to suggest that the Obama administration is doing something new when it comes to national politics, national defense, and foreign relations. We can almost be assured that there has been a bipartisan tradition of this kind of labeling and relabeling largely due to the fact that every administration is having to be rather nimble in terms of dealing with a lot of these issues. But there is a deep question of principle here and that deep question of principle is a lot deeper than a partisan question. Is indeed the United States violating our own sense of morality by a selective identification of some groups as terrorist and others as not when they are engaged in the very same horrifying behaviors?

But here we simply return where we began, with the process of euphemization and a classic example. We began with adultery that’s now considered by many just an extramarital affair or a fling, and then we compare that to the statement made by the White House spokesman yesterday when he said when it comes to the Taliban, they’re not actually a terrorist group – merely “an armed insurgency.” Let me point out the obvious moral lesson, if you were killed by an armed insurgency or a terrorist organization it doesn’t matter what someone calls it, it matters what is done; it matters what they do and what they believe and who they are.

And one of the principles of the Christian worldview, regardless of its partisan application, is that we ought to call things what they are. We have to call things by their real name. And that’s especially true for Christians the closer we get to the question of evil; we dare not call evil anything other than what it is.