There's a word for that

The Sami people of Scandinavia have 180 words for snow and near 1000 for different kinds of reindeer. Canada's Inuit also can describe a wider variety of snow conditions than simply powder or slush. Language is a tool for telling what we have a need to talk about.

So when the sermon discussion took up the topic of "righteousness" I was distressed to find so few synonyms in popular speech. If it is an important concept should there not be loads of equivalents?

There is "ethic" of course, "rectitude," "morality," but these don't quite cover the same territory. We know that the world should be better than it is, but where are the words for actually being better people?

"Goodness" is another close miss. But goodness is an inclination, righteousness more of a status. "Respectability," yes, in an outward socially compliant sort of way, but leaving behind the true rightness of inner being.

Personally I favor "innocence," although we start out life innocent, fall into error and then try to work our way back toward righteousness. "Blamelessness" is also a serviceable word, especially in a culture eager to escape blame. "I don't so much care what went down, I just don't want to be blamed for it." "Faultlessness" and "flawlessness" can be taken in the direction of physical perfection and so really lead away from choice. If you are flawless it is probably your parents' fault.

Then we come to the whole forensic discussion. Legal righteousness. To be pronounced righteous, declared innocent, acquitted of crimes regardless of my actual guilt, overruling my evident flaws, is another whole matter. This is the righteousness imparted on the account of another. Finding a righteous person is challenging enough. Finding one who has righteousness to spare enough to render you and me right is nothing short of miraculous.

Righteousness is also forced to drag along with it the negative concept of self-righteousness. That is considerable baggage for an already endangered word. If self-righteous is an epithet, and righteousness somewhat dated, if current usage provides us no equivalent, then can we really say that the culture is that concerned about the concept of righteousness? Certainly a pluralistic relativism finds "being right" to be suspect. "Doing right" finds a much warmer reception, but who can produce a list of things to do that are always inherently right?

If we turn it around there are any number of wrong turns that twist life out of shape. The field of error is littered with ways to go astray. More are being invented every day it seems. There are a mountain of words to describe missing the mark, and a dearth of ways to talk about being better. And maybe that tells us about the neighborhood where we live. And where so few actually go.