YRR: Reclaiming the Word “Helpful”

By Ted Kluck

Last time, we examined the Young Calvinist fascination with the word “reclaiming,” and today we’ll be doing the same thing with the word “helpful.” There are few things that we young Calvinists love more than deciding what is or isn’t “helpful.” I think it would be helpful if I defined the word, loosely, for our purposes:

help·ful/ˈhelpfəl/Adjective Things that are helpful include things that I like and approve of, and things that aren’t helpful include everything else.

Things that we like deciding the helpfulness of: Books, blog fights (YRRers LOVE these!!), websites, podcasts, ministries, interviews, and actual people.

What’s great about the word helpful, is that it’s a very sly way to say that you can’t stand something without actually saying it. Example: “Gut Check Press isn’t helpful.” Translation: “I wish Ted and Zach had never started Gut Check Press because I can’t stand the sight of their super clever landing pages, their boxing glove logo, their smug faces, or the fact that they’re laughing all the time and having fun at a business that is supposed to be mostly grim and boring and include lots of meetings.”