Do Words Have Meaning?

I came across this excerpt from a book of Charles Colson:

In a culture with moral AIDS, words lose all meaning; or they are manipulated to obscure meaning....But when words lose their meaning, it is nearly impossible for the Word of God to be received. If sin and repentance mean nothing, then God's grace is irrelevant. Our preaching falls on deaf ears.

This moral deafness leads to disaster. The Scriptures tell us it was when people accepted King Ahab's gross evils as "trivial" that fearsome judgment befell ancient Israel.

Certainly evil is to be expected in a fallen world. What is not expected is for a holy people to accept it. If Christ is Lord of all, Christians must recapture their sense of moral outrage.

(From Who Speaks for God by Charles Colson)