Matthew Anderson wrote the book “The Elements of Eloquence.” In this book he talks about how to phrase a sentence in a way that makes things (you guessed it) more eloquent. For example, he stresses alliteration as a technique. You probably know the term but just in case I will let you know what it means. Alliteration is a technique that emphasizes repetition, which comes most often with consonant sounds at the beginning of words. Just look at his own title to see what we are talking about. The title stresses the “el” sound with two different words, and it just sounds good.
Alliteration establishes a rhythm with the reader. We remember phrases and titles better that use it. Advertisers know this well. A lot of products for sale use alliteration to help us remember and like the name. Here are some examples of that:
Dunkin Donuts
American Airlines
Coca Cola
Big Bazaar
Gold’s Gym
Krispy Kreme
PayPal
See what I mean? Even non-retail products use this. You have probably heard of TED Talks, for example. Or maybe you have stayed at a Bed and Breakfast. We even get alliteration used by famous authors with interesting phrases. Take Charles Dickens in his first two paragraphs of “A Christmas Carol.”
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Do you know what a door-nail is? I didn’t. I had to look it up. A door-nail was driven and bent into the backside of a door so that it could not be reused. They were “dead” in the sense that they couldn’t be used again. But there is alliteration again. Dead as a door-nail.
We know we like alliteration, even if we don’t know why. Another things Anderson talks about in his book is the order we put adjectives in. You probably haven’t thought of that either. There is actually a rule of the order of adjectives. You know this rule even if you have never been taught it in school. Let me give you an example. If you drive by a house that is rather large and painted green, and you wanted to describe the house to someone else, what would you say? You might say something like “I drove by a big green house.” But why not say “I drove by a green big house.” Instead? That second sentence doesn’t sound right, does it? It’s because the size of something is supposed to come before the color. Anderson gives us the full order in his book.
“Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
You just learned this kind of thing by osmosis, probably because everyone around you said things that way. There are other rules in society like that, things that no one taught you. Rather, they showed you. We hold the door open for people. We might take our shoes off when we go to someone else’s house and see the hosts are not wearing shoes themselves. We keep a little distance between us when we have a conversation with someone at a gathering.
Jesus had rules too.
Luke 6:20-31
20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22
Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
24
“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Now, imagine what kind of world it would be if these rules were the ones everyone knew? What if it was just commonly known and accepted that you would love your enemy and do good to those you hated you? What if it was common knowledge to pray for those who mistreated you or we turned the other cheek as a matter of routine?
How could we ever get to this point? We would do it the same way the other rules got to be that way. We would learn them because everyone around us was using them. If everyone around you was acting the way Jesus showed us, it would feel weird not to also act that way. There is only one way to make this happen. If we want these rules to be commonplace, we have to practice them so much that the people around us know them instinctively. That is is the way to make Jesus’ rules a reality.