Communication

If I were to list the ten most neglected factors in human life, communication would be high on the list.  The omissions, distortions, evasions, variances, attitudes, and prevailing ignorance are pernicious barriers to effective communication.  Communication implies that a message has been sent that either the sender wants to emit, and/or the receiver wants to gain.  It is presumed that the communication makes sense to truth about some benefit (desired objective) for the sender and/or receiver, but likely meeting something both sender/receiver desire to register.  Communication suffers often with the common practice of violating its meaning to send messages desired, needed, useful, educative, and generative to intellect and emotion.  Much of what is called communication is noise registered on hearing acuity, and/or gibberish registered on the senses, and/or falsehood in physical exchange registered most often in facial and body actions and/or appearances that imply meaning.  Persons respecting genuine communication deplore the use of the word communication when the distortions wound or fail to serve affirmative humanizing factors, a gift of God to wisdom in mankind – not enjoyed in its reflective and controlling meaning for thought and conduct by dumb animals.  The word dumb in this context has no purpose in denying the marvels of animal life, but that life has no clear way of communicating to intellect through word symbols, even when the animal learns some symbols and responds accordingly, as when a tamed animal hears the name assigned by the master.  That relates to habit.  Mankind is not to be mastered but persuaded because we can communicate reflectively – sensibly.  Since there is nothing in nature that denies freedom in the context of that nature, communication informs all who will send and receive it, what may be done for rights and relationships found in knowing and acting – for self.  We can and must, if we expect to arrive at our appointed objectives, communicate rightly to ourselves and others.  What a gift!  To neglect it is to fail.

In this perception of speaking/listening, writing/reading, and acting/reacting human beings learn to live in a social world either in sensible cooperation (perceived in Christianity as serving others unselfishly), or in presumed self-interest which in distortion may be summarized as sin.  Languages, (spoken, written or acted out in conduct) communicate the processes and anticipate outcomes.  Persuasion (rhetoric) is presumed to be related to evidence.  Careful reading of Scripture passages using the affirmative (Yea) and the negative (Nay), are somewhat different in the casting of those words than the way in which we tend to use them.  The New Testament tends to cast the words clearly in spiritual perception: Yea, this is what God offers to mankind as Christians or those who seek ethical life; and: Nay, this is not what God offers to us as Christians or those who seek ethical life.  Scripture generally means that a listener/reader is not right or wrong but the concept is to be evaluated as true or false.  God offers declarations, affirmations and clarity.  If Nay is used it is because the affirmation has been missed, and the concept misunderstood so: Come let us reason together, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 1:18)  Let us agree on what the consideration is, so to place faith, or deny it, to the message of affirmation related to God.  We speak and God listens.  God offers morality. Our response is not rooted in emotion/premonition or some other context than faith with God in his truth.

A monumental problem in all this is that truth for mankind is found in the orderly way of sifting through evidence from nature that can be identified, verified or anticipated.  Since spiritual truth is higher and broader than nature’s, it can’t be verified in natural (hard/verifiable) evidence, but in spiritual (soft/faith) evidence that is found in experience, intuition, differentials somewhat distant from natural truth like prayer invites answers verifiable to the person of prayer.  Spiritual matters are spiritually discerned, as noted in 1 Corinthians 2:13-16, a vital passage.  All this and more relates to the method of God, not to prove in nature the gospel, but simply to declare it, invite persons to embrace it, explain where it is misunderstood, and proceed in that truth to gain the fellowship and approval of God for mankind.  God’s persuasion is rooted in his promises of Scripture, and accepted by faith in his truth and integrity.