Avoiding Clichés Like the Plague

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I recently read this post on avoiding clichés and thought it was very insightful. At least for me, clichés cause my attention to drift. I think: “I’ve heard this before, and I don’t need to hear it again.” If I hear enough of them, and my brain effectively shuts down.

If I’m honest, I’d say this happens a lot with certain Christianisms. God loves you. Trust in His sovereignty. You’re a sinner. Do everything for God’s glory. Have an eternal perspective, or the familiar Lighthouse refrain: Life is not about you. Sometimes, I find that I even avoid using these lines, because I think it’s so easy. It’s almost like I’m ashamed of them.

But what does it mean, exactly, that these sayings are cliché? The article I linked to describes a cliché as “a unique expression when you first came across it, but since then, you have heard it repeated so many times, it has lost all the original shine.” But is the ineffective quality of a cliché really a reflection on the saying itself? Do these truths somehow lose their value over time? That can’t be the case, because truth is absolute and unchanging. So then, the fact that these Christian principles become cliché has to be a reflection of a skewed perspective. It’s the recipient of the truth that is changing. Personally, I know that’s definitely the struggle in my own heart. When I go through seasons of dryness or doubt, I usually find that truths that were once valuable and precious to me have lost their luster. That’s not because the truths themselves diminished in any way, but because I have loosened my grip on them.

I agree that clichés should be avoided. But for these Christian “clichés”, I don’t think the answer is to avoid speaking them or encouraging them, but it is to guard our hearts from growing so desensitized to them.

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