The first verse of Michael Card’s beautiful song “The Final Word” is:
‘You and me, we use so very many clumsy words

The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard

When the Father’s wisdom wanted to communicate His love

He spoke it in one final perfect word’

That puts it well, but…Michael Card clearly showed how clumsy human words are by his grammatical mistake right at the beginning. Of course, he should have said: “You and I, we use so very many clumsy words…” For decades it was very common in the English language to use the pronoun “me” instead of “I” when it was linked with a name or other pronoun by the word “and”. People said such things as “Peter and me walked along the sea.” “She and me got along very well.” or “The pianist and me played this music regularly”.

Of course, it was wrong. After all, the subjective pronoun “I”, rather than the objective pronoun “me” should be used in those sentences. “Peter and I walked along the sea.” There were people who made it their mission to correct this common grammatical mistake. They have probably succeeded beyond their dreams. Today, not so many use the pronoun “me” after “and” when it should not be used. Far more common is the overreaction, namely to never use the pronoun “me” after the word “and”.

Now people say things like “James walked along the sea with Peter and I.” “There was agreement between her and I”. “To you and I this music is familiar.” Of course, that’s equally wrong and sounds stilted. Grammatically it doesn’t make any sense.  Using “I” rather than “me” after the word “and” has become quite accepted and common, probably out of a desire to be correct without understanding the underlying grammar.  And it has resulted in absurd language.

We see a similar overreaction in other areas of life, particularly also in social attitudes. There are things in our social life that have crept in over time that are clearly wrong. Once they are pointed out, a movement grows to correct that and the pendulum swings fully to the other extreme without really understanding the cause of the problem.

I think it is important to see problems, but then not to overreact, rather to understand them more deeply. For that we may need to take our time and read a good book, best of all the Good Book.