Recently Estee and I had a conversation with a couple friends of ours. He, Mark, works for Quicksilver and she, Lori, is a Ph.D student in linguistics.

Lori shared with Estee and I that in the world of linguistics, there are two types of people. There are syntacticians who even though sound like people who are very tactical with their sinning, are actually people who are somewhat focused on the correct rules of language. These are the people who are going to correct you when you use whom when you should use who or ought instead of should. If you will these are the letter of the law sorts of people.

There are others who study language and are less interested in the rules of the the language but are more interested in how people put words together. While the syntactician will correct your grammar, this second group (and I have forgotten their name!) will hear an odd turn of a phrase and say, "that is really interesting that you use those word(s) in that way." If you will these are the people who are interested in how language is actually used by people.

Both groups see/hear a language anomaly but have different responses to it. One is seeking to be corrective and the other is seeking curiosity.

It got me thinking about Christianity. When you and I come across someone who is practicing the faith in a non-traditional way, do we take corrective steps or curious steps?

Are we interested in ensuring the tradition stays constant and uniform or interested in discovering the ways in which people's lives are being influenced by the faith and the faith is being influenced by their lives?

Are we corrective or curious?