Lewis Carrol wrote this bit of nonsense:
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun. The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Apparently, though the Jabberwock was nonsense, he had jaws that bit, claws that caught, and was worth being wary of.
I urge you to be wary of the Jabberwock of jargon. Humorously, the term jargon is itself jargon.
Jargon is special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand. Religions are full of jargon. While some specialized words are required to convey big ideas that cannot be briefly expressed otherwise, most jargon used by religious people is words that they cannot put into their own words because they convey ideas that they do not understand.
Don't use words you don't understand. Or, put in terms of positive action, when you see or hear a word you do not understand, look it up. The most important application of this advice is to do this in your scripture study. The second most application is to do this when evaluating when you and other people believe (about all things, not just so-called spiritual things).
As you are reading the scriptures, if you hit a word you do not understand, stop. Formulate questions about this word: What does this word mean? Why was it used here? Where else is it used? How would I explain this to a person who had never heard it? Could I explain this to an eight year old? How would I? It's ok if you can't answer these questions immediately. Just the effort of formulating questions usually results in revelation sufficient to answer them, but some things require more time to answer. Your effort will open the door to the experiences you need to find your answers.
Do not believe what you do not understand, and don't limit what you understand to what you already understand. That is, do not imprison yourself to your current understanding. Ask questions! Use the keys God has given you to continuously transcend your ignorance by reacting to revealed ignorance by active learning.
One side effect of embracing jargon is that you make it easy for yourself to believe in ideas that would be very obviously false if you just said what you really mean instead of dressing up the idea in a fancy word. What do you mean by "speaking in tongues"? What do you mean by "prophet" or "pope"? What do you mean when you say "blessing"? What do you mean when you say "fellowship"? What do you mean when you say "tithing"? And on and on.
Say what you mean. In your own words. It's ok to use fancy words if you can define them in your own words, and you are using them with people who share your intended meaning. Otherwise, you may as well be saying "Jabberwock jubjub bandersnatch."
Do not underestimate the power of words.
You probably have no idea of the influence words can have when you think you understand them, but you either have never thought about what they mean or--worse--you have adopted an incorrect definition for them.
Great things can be brought down with small attacks. The national power grid, for instance, is so fragile that a team of, say, twenty people with regular guns could bring it all down by attacking something like four key places, according to Ted Koppel's research in his important book, "Lights Out."
How fragile is your understanding of God? How few words would you have to misunderstand before you were completely derailed from the path towards him? Probably very few.
It is astonishing how incapable professing Christians are of explaining words supposedly central to their belief: faith, repentance, sin, glory, grace, glorify, salvation, exaltation. How many of those could you misunderstand without being waylaid in your eternal progression? I'm not sure you can misunderstand any of those without encountering eternal limitations.
Co-opting terms is a powerful Satanic tactic that mirrors the dichotomy between all that God does and all that Satan does: God creates words. Satan steals them. When someone shifts the meaning of a word to mean something different (usually opposite) of what it originally meant, they not only mangle the value of all previously said using that word, they also corrupt all presently-held beliefs that include that word, and they furthermore block all future thought that would have otherwise occurred using that word as a vehicle.
It is easy to adulterate a word. It is very easy to reuse a word. It is very hard to create a word.
Rampant redefinition of words is like deploying guerrilla terrorism to tear down a city. It took monumental wealth, intelligence, investment, foresight, skill, natural resources, infrastructure, and work to build, but it can be burned down in a relative moment by people with far less of all of those things.