There are words in our language that we use so much they become trite and lose their significance. Character is one of those words. In fact, it has come to have contradictory meanings in various appli-cations. With admiration, when we wish to praise someone who uniformly exerts a good influence, we say he/she is "a person with character." On the other hand, we call someone a "character" who acts silly, or engages in unexpected, unusual behavior, or causes trouble and fouls things up. It goes without say-ing that when we state that "character is important," we are referring to its positive, beneficial nature rather than the negative connotation the word can have.
As I contemplated the basic meaning involved in this term, I looked up its derivation and found its origin in the Greek word carakthr, which designated "a tool for engraving." The basic idea involved is something that is set or established. The ancient Greek had two main ways of writing, with a stylus on a wax tablet, or with an iron tool upon stone. When something was written on wax, it was easily erased by smoothing the wax with the other end of the stylus, with a finger, or by heating. But when a message was engraved on stone with hammer and iron point, it was put there to stay. To remove it, one had to exert great effort to chisel or sand away the inscription. I have never read or heard of a single inscription on wax that survived from ancient Greece, but thousands of lines of script chiseled in stone still exist.
As philosophers and theologians pondered human nature, it occured to them that the constitution of some people is like a wax inscription, and for others it is like a configuration engraved in stone by iron. Hence the application of the word "character" from the iron engraving tool. A person without character is unstable and therefore undependable; neither he nor his works will endure. Like an inscription in wax, his life will vanish and leave nothing behind for anyone to read or use. But a person of charater has fixed qualities that do not move with the storms of life and changes in the enviornment.
(There will be much more to come on this subject in future articles. BFW)
