Some girl in the fifth grade yesterday called my ten-year-old son hot.

Yup. Hot.

Okay, so I think the word hot means, like, sexy and attractive and all that. So when I, his mother, hear that a little vixen uses that word to describe my baby-faced son, I’m ready to sign up for recess duty. I might need to check this out.

And then I realize that fifth-grade hotness is really something else entirely. It really means, from what the locals tell me, that she called him crush-worthy, a boy with some perceived value, a boy who won’t pull her ponytail. This is, in fact, a very good thing. It’s really not about being hot after all.

As his mother, I am caught in the unenviable position of interpreting an elementary school lexicon, which I can access only from a distance. I hear a word, a phrase, in solitary confinement and I botch the interpretation. Such linguistic investigation is teaching me a lesson, namely that unless I hang out on your playground and speak your language, I’d best not try to interpret it. It will only make me look foolish.

Joseph Conrad confessed that words are the great foes of reality. He means that words often betray what we really mean—the truth under the surface. To become a student of you, I must become a student of your language. This sort of careful study is what marriages and churches and communities and even Bible translations are made of. It’s hard work to learn someone else’s language, and that’s why we lazy people would rather not even try. Plus, it’s easier that way to misunderstand you while I’m on the outside looking in and then declare it’s your fault.

One of the fallouts I’ve observed in our modern, decentralized Christianity is that different faith communities are no longer taking the time to listen to the real meaning behind each group’s private language. If a church calls its prayer time “meditation,” and I am not a member of that church, I had better keep my mouth shut before I tell others there’s a Buddha in their lobby. If another church invites women to its leadership meetings, and I am not a member of that church, perhaps I shouldn’t assume they forgot to study I Timothy 2. If a Christian university uses the word patriotism on its website, and I am not familiar with their core doctrines, perhaps I should withhold judgment about their perceived political affiliations.

Discernment is tricky and requires great spiritual maturity. Compassionate interpretation also requires us to listen and sometimes to live among foreigners. Words are organic and contextual, as my son’s admirer so innocently demonstrated to me yesterday. If you never visit the playground, don’t panic at the first sign of controversy. Instead, listen to the intentions beneath the words and see if the heart of the matter might be obscured by a misleading vernacular. If you do find that the little girl is really a vixen, then by all means, call her mother and protect your innocent son. But if you just don’t understand the secret language of fifth graders, make sure your Hot-O-Meter is in good working order before you interpret the results.