Nouns and Adjectives

C.S. Lewis when describing the Fall of man in The Problem of Pain,writes, "They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives." He's speaking of our desire to be God when we are and will forever be man. But I love the analogy he uses.

Adjectives, as we all know have one main function: to modify or describe a noun in the sentence. They cannot stand on their own. They cannot be the subject or perform an action. Their single purpose is to describe the noun, to show us more about what the noun is like.

And the noun. The noun is the meat of the sentence. You can't have a sentence without a noun or pronoun. There can be no story or subject or setting if there is no noun. The noun is the point. There need not be adjectives if there is no noun.

Isn't this a beautiful picture? Our single purpose or role on earth is to describe the Noun. Show the world what He is like. We need not try to be the Subject of the story or the sentence. We can never be. The story would not make sense if we tried to make an adjective the subject. It breaks the basic laws of grammar.

Nor would our story make sense if we tried to make ourselves and not God the subject. It can never be about us. That would break a basic law of the universe.

So instead of pushing awkwardly into a grammatical place that does not belong to us, our role as believers is to be the best, most wonderful, beautiful adjectives that we can be that others might know more about the Noun through us.