Failure to Communicate
August 22, 2019
I get a daily email from a website called Word Genius. I’ve been learning some fun new words lately. A ‘miasma’ is an unpleasant or noxious smell. To use the word in a sentence, “The miasma left behind by the sewage truck made us all cover our mouths and noses.” Another new word I’ve learned is ‘halcyon’. It means calm, serene or tranquil. For example, “I miss the halcyon days of my childhood when I didn’t have to worry about the pressures of adult life.” My favorite new word is ‘mondegreen’. It means a word or phrase that results from misheard language, or a made up lyric that replaces a song’s real words. An example of this is from the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze.” “Singing along with Hendrix, she belted out the mondegreen “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.” My nephew used to sing a really funny one. There is a line in the Queen song, “We Will Rock You,” that goes, “Somebody’s gonna put you back into your place.” My nephew thought the line was, “Somebody’s gonna push a bag into your face!” I can’t even type it without laughing!
It goes to show that communication is hard. We can be misheard. Two people can’t communicate when one mishears the other. Even if properly heard, the greater difficulty in communication is that we are often misunderstood. We hear the words the speaker said perfectly, but we don’t understand what those words mean, or worse, we misinterpret the speaker meant by them. Words have a wide range of meaning. Sometimes the way we say them, our tone, body language and facial expressions can affect the meaning of words. In Mandarin, you can say the exact same sentence but the meaning changes depending on the tone of the words! In English, if we are being sarcastic, we may mean exactly the opposite of what the words we are saying actually mean. Living in Texas in August as I do, I might say something like, “I wonder what the weather is going to be like today.” That’s a sarcastic way of saying I know exactly what the weather is going to be today, because it’s the same every day, sunny and 100 degrees. With so many possible ways to be misunderstood, it’s a wonder we ever communicate at all.
Sometimes the problem is not related to mishearing or misunderstanding, cultural differences, tonal inflections or sarcasm. Sometimes the reason that we are misunderstood is spiritual. 1 Cor. 2:12-14:“12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
The source of understanding of spiritual matters for the Christian is God Himself. Before I was a believer, the truths of the Bible seemed like pure nonsense to me. I would not accept the truth, but beyond that, I could not accept it. That’s because the gospel is from God, so God has to help us understand it. If someone wrote a letter to me in Mandarin, I’d need someone who read Mandarin to explain it to me. It’s the same with spiritual matters. God helps us to discern the words of scripture so we can understand and receive the gospel. Jesus explained this principle to the Pharisees in John 8:43. He said to them, “Why is my language not clear to you?” That was a rhetorical question. Jesus immediately gave the answer: “Because you are unable to hear what I say.” The Pharisees’ ears worked just fine. They were unable to understand because they did not have the Holy Spirit.
What does this mean for our efforts to evangelize the lost? The first thing we must do is to genuinely care about the lost and pray for them to understand the truth! We don’t know who God will save or how He intends to save them. We ask God for the souls of the lost. The second thing we do is to share the gospel with others. As Christians, our duty is to tell them that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead, even if those words don’t make sense to them yet. In Genesis 10, God confused languages so people who spoke the same language could not understand each other. At Pentecost in Acts 2, God unconfused languages so people who did not speak the same language could understand each other. God is not bound by the limitations of human language. God can untangle every misunderstanding and mondegreen if it is His will. The third thing we do is to leave the results to Him. God is mighty to save. We are not. Charles Stanley always says, “Trust God and leave all the results to Him.” That’s good advice for evangelism and for life.
