Communication fouls up everything…and…helps make everything work! My personal conviction from Genesis (see Babel incident) is that God put a judgment on communication so we wouldn’t accomplish near so much (and gloat in our own press releases!). Well, here’s a little way in which we flunk communication 101 as we battle the judgment.
We tend to assume that
DISAGREE = DON’T UNDERSTAND
Have you noticed how often people keep telling you and telling you something…and you simply disagree? The reason is simple; they think you don’t understand. I’m mean, let’s face it, “if you understood me, you’d surely agree with me!” Of course, this presumes we are right.
What would happen if you really began to explain to people exactly what you understand them to be saying to you? What would happen if they BOTH knew you understood their view AND disagreed with them?
It’s pretty obvious…you both could talk about the real issues and maybe get somewhere instead of explaining, and explaining, and explaining!
That’s one beauty of my friends who disagree with the Bible…it often means they at least understand something it says well enough to disagree with it. Sometimes, I think we believers are actually busy agreeing with things we don’t understand (but that’s another discussion).
Fred Lybrand