People may unconsciously, and often deliberately, transfer devotion from God to the symbolic power of God-words. We never know for sure, who is genuine or to what extent. If we have faith, it is inspired and informed by people who may be not be authentic. Some may hide how a word points to something to hide that they in fact treat the word as the very thing it points to.
The point is that any word can become a replacement for what it is about. And any word can be inflated as if it were really the thing it pointed to. The next point is that a word trying to grasp, connect to and invite a higher power will become this by a different mechanism. It becomes a kind of sacrament - a symbol that is what it pictures. A sacrament would mean you think that the divine itself is using the word to transform you and connect to you - like a presence attached to and in the word.
When a word tries to capture something supernatural or very important, it acts as if it can make that reality present and link us to it. The more it tries to do this, the more weight it seems to carry, and people may start focusing on the word itself instead of what it points to. This effort to make the unseen real accelerates word inflation, because the word’s symbolic power grows faster than its connection to the actual reality.
Word inflations will grow in power and lead to additional words being inflated. Soon it goes beyond words. Feelings and impressions get inflated as well.
The religious word inflation about say God may indirectly lead to the word sin or evil being inflated as it is the rejection of God. Evil/sin becomes as powerful as God. It seems that as we are impacted deeply, and for longer, when somebody harms us, than by the good they do for us, that word inflation may explain that. Or something connected to it.
It is plausible that environmental, personality and genetic influences play a role in how much we inflate words.
FIRST
Big claims require good quality evidence. The Bible itself sets that standard: if someone truly belongs to God, it will be shown in a visible life of holiness, not merely asserted in spiritual language. That is because God helps and offers grace. Also, a sincere person will experience a change if they adopt new beliefs. Words about God, faith, light, or salvation are cheap if they are not anchored in a life that is demonstrably shaped by love, self-control, humility, and costly obedience. Spiritual talk can easily become a substitute for devotion, where language is treated as sacred while actual character remains unchanged. If God is real and central, that reality must reorder priorities, habits, relationships, and desires in ways others can see over time. The true test of faith is not intensity of speech or fluency in religious terms, but whether a person’s life is increasingly centered on God rather than on the emotional power of God-words. Holiness, not rhetoric, is the evidence that matches the claim.
It is a concern how so many who are devoted to religious talk and concepts seem to be unconcerned about their "sin" or the harm they do to others. It tells us something. We will learn that humans like symbols and words become symbols - idols as it were. For that reason, the religious person is not necessarily really connecting to God.
THE ARGUMENT
We respond to words such as light, darkness, God, suffering, forgive, Jesus, evil and many more, as if the words were mythical mystical powers or entities - rather than what's meant by the actual words. We amplify them into a deep meaningful trigger. It is just like how the sacrament of eating bread and drinking wine is made of huge existential importance by the Christian. He thinks he feeds on God himself and the salvation of the universe.
That habit is usually called reification. Or more specifically hypostatization. It relates to treating abstract concepts or symbols as if they were concrete beings, forces, or entities. Power is projected unto them. In religious or philosophical language, it often overlaps with personification or mythologization, where words like light, darkness, evil, or suffering are unconsciously handled as mystical powers rather than as metaphors pointing to human experience, moral categories, or relational realities. The result is that language meant to describe meaning or experience is mistaken for literal actors operating in the world.
It must be added though that if this is unconscious, it is not merely so. What we want and select has an influence on what appears in the subconscious mind. There are many who are able to make the words into something of tremendous, albeit perhaps temporary, existential and religious value.
I've noticed that in films how words are invested with some kind of religious mystery - even magic. Talk if say light doesn't mean much or mean anything permanent but words grip people too much. They seem lifted from mundane reality - they get relief from how mundane life is. They feel they can touch a spirit world, another universe - one that is this one is a mere shadow of.
Symbolic language gets detached from ordinary life and treated as absolute. Words like light, darkness, good, evil, God, or destiny start out as metaphors grounded in mundane experience (seeing vs. not seeing, safety vs. danger, care vs. harm). But in movies, those words are often lifted out of the everyday and presented as if they carry timeless, self-evident power.
A few overlapping ideas help name what’s happening. Reification / hypostatization: the symbol becomes a “thing” that seems to act on its own. Mythic inflation (from psychology and film theory): ordinary human conflicts are blown up into cosmic forces. Symbol absolutism: the audience is invited to treat the word as permanently meaningful, rather than situational or human-made. Semantic saturation loss: the word feels profound because of repetition and framing, not because it still points clearly to experience.
I would add that reification by turning an idea or word into a thing or some of intelligence that is interested in you is already engaging in mythic inflation.
Film is especially good at this because visuals + music bypass critical language processing. And symbols are paired with emotional cues, so meaning feels felt rather than examined. Ambiguity is protected: the less specific the word (“light”), the more people can project onto it. So when a character says “We need the light,” it often doesn’t mean much concretely—no clear action, no grounded reference—but it feels meaningful. The word grips people because it sounds elevated, even though it’s been abstracted away from anything permanent or precise.
Why does mythic inflation happen?
For some it just does. In a sense the words promise mystery, or hint that they hide it, so that would not be surprising.
Other reasons follow.
Humans naturally simplify complex reality into opposites. Psychologically, this reduces uncertainty and anxiety - and increases moral "certainty". Religious devotion often strengthens when people feel morally aligned with “good” and protected from “evil”. A wall is put up which can be dangerous.
Across cultures, light is linked to safety and darkness to danger — this predates religion. Religious language taps into deep evolutionary associations. Humans evolved to fear darkness - predators, unknown threats. Light signals visibility and control.
Words like pure, clean, holy versus tainted, unclean, sinful trigger disgust responses. Disgust is a powerful emotional system tied to survival. Religion often stirs it up over doctrinal, moral or spiritual contamination.
Repetition of charged words holy, sacred, divine, blessed creates conditioning. The words gain emotional weight over time so meaning becomes less analytical and more felt. This is similar to how national anthems, mantras and motivational slogans work. A trance-like focus may occur along with emotional elevation. There will be a group bonding that reinforces all that.
When many hear of God's word, his divine commands, ultimate meaning, sin their brains shift from critical thinking to authority acceptance.
Religious language pairs hope words and fear words. Examples of hope words would be God, salvation, mercy, grace and heaven. Examples of fear words would be judgment, punishment, hell, wrath and karma. This activates the brain’s reward–threat system. This creates a strong motivation to conform along with emotional investment. There could be strong devotion even under stress.
The words such as soul, God, evil, light, darkness work because they tap into pre-verbal emotional systems, not just logic.
Let us talk about evil or sin for a moment. Evil or sin is supposed to keep coming back if it is not diagnosed accurately and dealt with. It is hard to pin down for it hides exactly what it is and what it is doing. The use of words like evil or sin can become a kind of idolatry when the language matters and not what it is meant to name. The words evil or sin become substitutes or replacements for evil or sinl. Religious terms are treated as if they carry mystical power—invested with magic, mystery, or cosmic weight—while real moral change, responsibility, and love are neglected. Through reification and mythic inflation, abstract words are handled as forces or beings rather than as symbols pointing to concrete human actions and harms. If that is happening, the one battling evil and sin is in fact empowering them.
Hatred of or fear of evil and sin is considered an adequate, albeit a bit negative, way to run to God and embrace him. Every believer does that up to a point. It means that everybody uses devotion to assist evil up to a point.
In short: the language feels transcendent because it’s been cut loose from the mundane, not because it actually explains anything. That certain words trigger psychological responses that can shape religious devotion is actually a well-studied idea in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. It is easy for the language about God and mercy and other things associated with him to be the real object of devotion.
CASE STUDY THE EUCHARIST
It seems philosophically strange to place intense desire on being fed by the body and blood of Jesus if that bodily presence, by the doctrine itself, lasts only until digestion - maybe ten minutes. If what remains afterward is grace rather than physical presence, then the transformative effect must lie in what is left behind, not in the act of consumption as such. In that case, it is unclear why the bodily feeding should be treated as the primary object of longing rather than the moral and spiritual transformation that grace is meant to produce over time. When devotion concentrates on the momentary presence of the elements instead of on the enduring reordering of life that grace is supposed to effect, attention risks shifting from what the sacrament signifies to the sacrament as an end in itself. This raises the question of whether the focus has subtly moved from transformation toward symbolic consumption. It looks like the experience is about the words and the ideas. The idolatry about words we talked about can be expressed in the form of sacraments.
SYLLOGISM
Major premise: If God is truly central to a person’s life, that centrality will reorder their actions, character, and relationships over time - if he has the power to help.
Minor premise: Fluency in religious language does not necessarily reorder actions, character, or relationships and even if the person is good it may be down to the power of the religious narrative they have.
Conclusion: Therefore, fluency in religious language or even religious devotion is not reliable evidence of genuine connection to God.
SYLLOGISM
Major premise
If naming a moral problem replaces addressing its concrete causes and effects, the problem is reinforced rather than diminished.
Minor premise
Religious naming of “sin” or “evil” often replaces concrete self-examination, responsibility, and repair.
Conclusion
Therefore, religious use of “sin” and “evil” often reinforces what it claims to oppose.