Careless with words
‘Bad money drives out good.” Even though that saying is 500 years old, it strikes me that it is a useful mantra to bear in mind in the modern age: we seem to have too much of everything and thus have less and less respect for what is truly valuable.
“Meanwhile, the Sermon on the Mount was only 1000 words — and God gave Moses the 10 Commandments in barely 300 words. “ (CNS photo from Reuters)
The saying is called Gresham’s Law and it dates from England at the time of Henry VIII when the coins were still made of pure silver.
In order to produce more money — but without having the mineral resources to support it — King Henry gave permission for coins to be produced which had a lower silver content.
The English public soon got wind of this and were reluctant to accept the new coins. But the new coins looked like the old coins so that also meant they were reluctant to accept any silver coin, even the pure ones: the bad money (the coins with lower silver value) drove out the good money (the ones with the full silver value).
While the origins of this might sound a bit obscure it is a tenet that has application in almost every area of life.
The flood of e-mail or Facebook communication is a modern-day example. Whether from our colleagues, or from friends, or from organisations, to which we belong, we all receive more messages than we could possibly read. After a while, instead of spending time to filter through and work out which ones are worth reading and which ones are not, we just ignore everything from that source.
Bad communications drive out good. (I just hope that there aren’t too many of you on the Jesuit Institute e-mail list who feel that we send you too much!).
We devalue words in general by using them too freely (and I write this conscious of the red pen of my editor!).
It took the European Union over 65000 words to articulate its Constitution — and famously “God” is not among them. The founding fathers of the United States, on the other hand, used only 4500 words.
Meanwhile, the Sermon on the Mount was only 1000 words — and God gave Moses the 10 Commandments in barely 300 words. But then I suppose chiselling Hebrew on tablets of stone was a lot harder than using a word processor!
We also devalue specific words by using them too freely or too lightly. Do people on Facebook really have 2000 “friends”.
A recent example of Gresham’s Law was in the context of the controversial visit by President Jacob Zuma and other ANC officials to the visibly ailing President Mandela. The press attacked Zuma and co for exploiting Madiba and trying to make political capital from being associated with him, especially when it seemed that he had little idea of what was going on around him.
The ANC’s response, predictably, was to claim African high ground. This was, we were told, an example of ubuntu: visiting the elderly and showing the world that we care for them is apparently the African way of doing things, in implicit contrast to the European way.
As an aside, I would be fascinated to know how many of the office bearers who rushed to be seen with Madiba go regularly to visit their own aging relatives.
It is possible of course that the ANC’s motives were well-intentioned and were not political. The problem is that when the public and the media have lost so much trust in the ruling party that they suspect bad motives for everything that is done (“bad money”), the occasions when they might be using the “good money” of integrity and noble intentions get driven out.
And when the term ubuntu is used to justify or to name anything at all which even brushes past an African tradition, we devalue the term so much that good examples of ubuntu are driven out by bad examples of ubuntu.
So perhaps we can set an example as a Church by using our words intentionally. Let’s start with words like sin, forgiveness, love, community.
What would it be like if we used these less easily and instead reserved them for when they were really true?
- Catholic Schools in the Market - February 10, 2026
- Ring the Bells for the New Year - January 5, 2026
- Pope Leo’s First Teaching - December 8, 2025
