“When language is translated, not only its beauty but also much of its reality is lost. For example,” he said, “what the world calls the Olympic ‘games’ are no such thing. These events are not play. They are not sport.”

“What are they, then?” I asked him.

“I cannot tell you in English,” he said. “The Greek word for what happens at the Olympics has no English equivalent.”

In the same way, I believe, there are words in the Christian language that have no equivalent in the ‘languages’ of business, law, or psychology. When we lose [these words] we lose the hold they have on the realities that they represent. ‘Sin’ does not translate simply as rule-breaking, for instance, any more than it translates as evidence of sickness or psychosis. It is a bigger word than that, with deeper roots….[as are words like] ‘repentance’, ‘grace’, and ‘salvation’. – Barbara Brown Taylor