U sp33k Kr!st3@|\| I337 ? (translation: you speak Christian ‘leet’?)
Posted on December 15, 2005
Filed Under A Geek's Guide to the Scriptures | Leave a Comment
The following is yet another funny joke blatantly stolen from — actually I don’t recall where. As to what is going on, I’ll give you a hint. User is on a laptop….
………………………………………………..
That was no l33tspeak, that was my 3a*t6*!
An IT Support tech. gets an urgent request for help from a user via the company’s in-house instant messaging system:
User: 5 have a *r6b3e0 – gfs f5xed 0y c60*4ter b4t n6w 0y ca*s 36c2 see0s t6 be *er0anent3y 36c2ed – any s4gget56ns+
Pilot fish: Wanna try that one again in non-l33tspeak?
User: can’t
User: st4c2 that way
User: gfs d5d 5t
Pilot fish: Um, you have your num lock on?
User: n6
User: c64rse n6t
Pilot fish: Shift ScrLk
(A pause.)
User: you are just so awesome
User: thanks!!!!!
Pilot fish: LOL!
< /End Joke>……………………………………………….
The point? Sometimes I catch myself in the same mode, religiously. That is to say, I get stuck in the Christian version of Leet Speak–and I don’t even know how to get out of it!
You may recall from a previous “episode” that leet-speak is where a computer zealot replaces normal letters with symbols and tries to pass it off as a language. Only an elitist (aka “leet”) computer geek can understand it.
Have you ever mentioned to someone at the office something like “I tithe regularly” or “what a fellowship we had last night” or maybe “the substitutionary atonement of the messiah”?
Sure, people ought to understand “technical” terms like atonement, but the reality is, they don’t. Many of us who use those terms don’t really understand them all that well ourselves.
Some people actually go out of their way to create a separation by way of religious jargon. I had a man question my salvation simply because I didn’t know what he meant when he asked me if I was a “blood brother.” A what??? (brrrrr. you’re creeping me out man)
On the other hand, it’s not very easy to stay in tune with people around us. I get strange looks if I mention “small group.” OK, OK, ooops, what I meant was, a group of friends came over. “Oh,” they say, “now I understand.”
THE WATCH WORD: Stay in tune with your friends
It is sooooo easy to get too familiar with technical terms, be they computer terms like virtual and off line, or religious terms like “born again” or even “worship.”
What say we pray for each other and encourage each other to always speak the language that others understand.
PS: How did this topic come up? Recently I spent some time with some wonderful, godly people, who, bless their hearts, are masters at X-sp33k (short for Christian speak). They are so good at it, that they don’t even know they are doing it. They, for all their good intentions, sounded like walking religious cliches. “God so richly went before us!” and “my brothers and sisters in Christ” and “God’s mighty hand was upon us” or “that service was anointed” or “he rightly divides the Word of Truth…” and on and on it went. I won’t even talk about what the prayers were like. I’m sure that they were sincere, and I’m sure that God understood them, but I couldn’t. And I’m “from the tribe” –the tribe called Christian, that is.
The whole event really got me thinking–about myself.
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