Communication Potholes II

.....so, clearly, I just fell into a Communication pothole in the previous blog post. My sister just pointed out that everything made sense until I veered off into venting about Christian artists. The communication train derailed out of the station.

This is what I was trying to say. Christian authors and musicians communicate with different mediums, but the authors often get themselves mired in jargon, whereas the musicians often wrap themselves up in sweetness of Christian living that the Bible never promoted. "Hopeful garments are saturated in desperation, not Christian proficiency." (Jan Meyers, "The Allure of Hope") Jesus literally drove away many of His followers by telling them the cost of discipleship - possibly no home, no earthly inheritance, no assurance of wealth, rejection, no earthly throne, loving your enemies, being a servant. They 'walked with Him no more" when He told them point-blank that they had to be chosen by the Father, and there was no way for them to influence their own salvation. The reason why it infuriates me that Christian communicators fail to get this across is because they promote Jesus without saying His hard sayings in words that can be understood. (Obviously, I just did the same thing, so you can forget about saying that I'm being judgmental. What a powerful phrase turned prissy - 'being judgmental'. All that says anymore is that you're acting like a hurt little child on a playground, unable to hear the slightest criticism.)

Another phrase that riles is "it's just semantics". It's one of those phrases that formerly meant something, and now it communicates "I don't want to be bothered with exploring whether there is a difference in meaning or not". All roads do not lead to the gospel. All words do not mean the same - even a child could tell you that much. There is such a thing as truth and lies, and it takes time to ascertain which is which, even in the Garden of Eden. "It's just semantics" is usually followed by "well, it doesn't matter anyway" which is a poorly expressed way of saying "I don't care enough about this topic to possibly argue with you, because then the clumsy fabric of tolerance will be ripped away like the Temple curtain, and expose all the dead bones of bad thinking behind it".

All of these things are examples of poor communication, which is verbal laziness. God gave us words, so that we can mirror Him as The Word, and we ought to respect that gift.