No previous age studied the art of communication as ours has. Whole professions are dedicated to getting out the message. We are urged to work out the implications of the dictum “the medium is the message.” We are warned against thinking that what is clear in our own minds will necessarily become clear to others if we speak about it. We must choose our words with care, for we may cause misunderstanding if we use the wrong words. In our seminaries the departments of practical theology give a good deal of attention to the way our young men and women try to convey their message.
Underlying all this there is often the implication that if we communicate well we will solve most of our problems, including the most serious ones. For instance, we take it as basic that in the modern world all nations wish to live at peace. But we speak many languages and we do not understand one another very well. There is always the danger that the leaders of one nation will take the sort of action that will inflame the leaders of another in part at least because neither understands what the other is really saying.
We believe that in industrial disputes the basic interests of all are best furthered by industrial prosperity. When there are strikes and lockouts, we feel this must be because people have not really considered what the other side is saying. So with local disputes and with what takes place within the family. We are not naive enough to believe that all our problems would be solved if we communicated better. But we hold that many of them would, or would at least be less serious. Communication is a most important art.
I am not in disagreement with much of this. I am as much in favor of improving our communications as anyone. I agree that often we have had troubles because the parties to a dispute have not fully understood one another. Where the protagonists are hitting at shadows, it is not surprising if there is no effective contact.
And, as one whose living is in training young men and women for Christian service, I am well aware that there is a crying need for Christians to be more articulate. In most parts of the so-called Christian world, those outside the Church have only the haziest idea of what Christianity is about. We have done a pretty poor job of conveying to our contemporaries some of the most exciting news there has ever been. For we have all too often made the Christian way seem full of negatives, a way of life crowded with prohibitions. We have made Christianity dull, and that is about as devastating a criticism as our generation can bring against anything.
When we consider the vital message of the New Testament, this is positively astounding. There we read of the most gripping event that ever happened in the history of this old world, the coming of God himself into the life of man. There we read of the high drama of the cross, of the sensational joy of the resurrection, of the inexplicable ascension. The story goes on to the coming of the Holy Spirit of God in power and of the way the early missionaries went out a crazy band (“fools for Christ’s sake”) with the program of winning the world for Christ.
It can scarcely be denied that we have done a poor job of communicating this to our generation. It is well that God’s people give themselves over to serious thought about how best to make our world see what the Christian message really is. All the expertise the Church can command should be brought into the task.
But having made that point emphatically I want to go on to say that the ability to communicate is not everything. Sometimes the problem is that people do communicate and then don’t like what they hear from the other side. On the level of war and strife, it is sometimes the people who speak the same language who come up with the most intractable problems. One example is northern Ireland. Others are not hard to find.
In industrial disputes and the kind of quarrel that splits communities, the parties may understand each other all too well. Each recognizes that the other wants something it is not prepared to concede. Under such circumstances good communication does not mean that the enmity is eliminated; it means that the enmity is fueled.
To put all our emphasis on communication is to overlook the deeper problem, which is what goes on in the heart of man. Long ago the prophet Jeremiah put it this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked [or sick]” (Jer. 17:9). Unless this is taken into account, the best communication this world can produce will not solve problems.
It is important that we find the words. But it is more important that we find the Word.
The Word is an intriguing name for the Saviour. Its background can be sought among the Greeks with their concept of the philosophical Logos, the rational principle behind all things, “the omnipresent wisdom by which all things are steered” as Heraclitus put it. Or we can think of the Jews with their Memra, the Word of God, and with their personifications of wisdom (Prov. 8) and the like. Such studies help us see that the concept was one that would convey meaning to people of widely differing backgrounds.
But as it is used in the New Testament, the term is a Christian one. Studies in its background may show us how some would understand it, but they do not lead us to the essential Christian meaning. That is bound up with the second Person of the Trinity and points us to God’s will to reveal himself. The Word is God speaking to man, making himself known. The Word is God coming to earth with a message of salvation and peace and joy. The Word is God triumphant over sin and death and hell. The Word is God taking notice of our plight and speaking to us where we are, not first demanding that we get where we ought to be.
The danger in concentrating on the words is that we put our emphasis on what we do and say. The words are ours. We know that our words can make all the difference in our contacts with our fellows. The right words can bring peace and harmony, the wrong words strife and hostility. The words are under our control.
But the Word is not. The Word is sovereign. The Word is God taking the initiative. The Word is divine wisdom. It is not to be countered or argued with but welcomed and accepted. The Word is the word of the cross, the word of salvation and grace, the Word that is to be received with gratitude and awe and love.
