toss this off as a request or suggestion. It’s an imperative from the Supreme Commander, a requirement that was and is grounded in what he himself demonstrated.
What I’m going to share in this chapter about communicating applies as much to other family members as to spouses. It’s applicable, in fact, to all relationships, whether with children, distant relatives, or casual friends. Before getting into specifics about the nature of communication, I want to discuss love—what it is that we’re to communicate.
It is far easier to delude ourselves into believing that we love others as Christ did by thinking of love in the abstract. We may, for example, imagine someone we know from church. This is likely to be a person with whom we have little history, and who therefore has had no opportunity to debate or oppose us. Such people are easy to love if we’re willing to fool ourselves about what we are, and are not, really doing.
Loving an imperfect spouse can prove far more challenging than loving the man or woman in the next pew. This is because to love someone in the flesh, in contrast to the imagination, forces us to move from the abstract to the concrete, to face the hard reality that love can be costly. Deep and enduring love is rarely acquired on the cheap or enjoyed without a price. Love demands sacrifice.
But of what? Precisely what does love require us to sacrifice, lay aside, and do without? What is the coin of its realm?
Love requires that we give up our never-ending need for vindication, self-justification, and having the audience, in this case our spouses, acknowledge that surely we were in the right all along. Sinners that we are, we know and demand our rights. Not imaginary or hoped-for rights, but real ones. We want the world to see that we have been wronged, treated unfairly, and in some way violated, especially when we know we’re right. When we clearly perceive that we’ve been the victim of injustice.
Of course, we have! Remember, you married a sinner. Never mind that we, too, are imperfect. We are quick to hold others accountable for what we explain away in ourselves. Without a nanosecond’s hesitation, we conclude that their bad behavior reflects character flaws, whereas ours was, well, because we had an off day.
When two human beings first establish even a casual connection, two material beings and two spiritual beings begin to engage. This implies that, however invisible the spiritual dimension may be, it is always there. Even if one remains oblivious to its existence and completely lacks faith in God, the spiritual remains inescapable.
All of us are beasts and angels, caught between two worlds, the animal and the angelic. We are like titans, struggling somehow to find the intimacy we need in the up-close-and-personal mini-verse of a marriage. Few of us may look, feel, or act much like demigods. Far from it. Yet, made in his image as we have been, our Creator has bestowed on us qualities that are indeed godlike. Our mental capacity is enormous, our power of invention almost limitless, and our potential to build up or destroy seemingly boundless. But, like the titans of Greek mythology, we have flaws and faults that make it hard for us to love.
Communication As Connecting
If you were to ask people to tell you what they mean by communication, some might say that it’s imparting or transmitting data. Others might suggest it’s the transfer of information from one person or group to another person or group. A few might focus on understanding and the expression of feelings. Still others, if they have studied semantics, might say that communication is conveying meaning, getting across what you intend.
Communication involves both sending and receiving. If you just talk, you’re only sending. If you just listen, you’re only receiving.
I once listened to a talk on communication given by a man whose family had worked in the film industry for decades as producers, directors, and actors. Rather than emphasizing proper diction, the mechanics of delivery such as not rocking from side to side, and avoiding fillers like “um,” he bypassed all that and focused on what he considered to be of paramount importance: connecting with your audience.
I’ve thought about this over the years and still believe it to be the best definition of communication I know. Depending on the purpose of the communication, we might add the phrase in ways that bring about change. But such change is secondary. Connecting with your audience remains the core concept. If you’re not connecting, you’re not communicating. It doesn’t matter how erudite you are, with what resonance you speak, or how well you articulate or project your voice. If you don’t connect, your message will fall on deaf ears and soon be forgotten.
I watched this play out at a Toastmasters meeting that Anna wanted to attend. After your first meeting or two, Toastmasters invites you to give a five-minute talk. I prepared mine carefully, making sure that every word was perfect. And, that’s how I delivered it, with consummate precision. The audience politely clapped but without enthusiasm. Then, Anna gave her talk. She spoke from the heart, without worrying about word choice, or the finer points of elocution, and she connected. They rewarded her with loud applause. A humbling experience to be sure, considering that I’d made a significant part of my living speaking.
The most important audience you’ll ever have is your spouse. It is he or she, above all, with whom you have to connect if you want to enjoy a happy and fulfilling marriage.
Hindering the Connection
I’ve stressed how we’re sinners; we marry sinners and so do our spouses. This is merely to accept a fundamental tenet of Christian doctrine: we fail to love God or our neighbor as ourself. As the late theologian Paul Jewett put it,11 rather than loving our neighbor as ourself, we love ourself in our neighbor.
Utopian hopes to the contrary, there will be no perfection of humanity in this life, and therefore Christians continue to live in the tension between two natures, which the New Testament refers to as flesh and spirit. Flesh, as used in Scripture, is how English Bibles often translate the Greek word sarx, which refers to more than sensuality.12 It encompasses narcissism and egocentricity.
If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,13 coming to terms with our imperfections is a corollary of such fear. Fear is a biblical way of expressing how without reckoning with and acknowledging the ultimate worthiness of God,14 human beings remain in the dark. Regardless of how otherwise brilliant, they fail to grasp the most important realities that determine the nature and significance of human existence. Another way of putting this might be that genuine faith begins with recognizing and coming to terms with the implications of the radical difference between God’s nature and ours. This is sound theology.
What is unsound is trying to excuse and explain away bad behavior by insisting how, after all, we’re “just sinners.” In past conflicts with Anna, when she’s expressed her objection to something I’ve said or done that conveyed rigidity, ingratitude, or ungraciousness—perhaps all three—that’s precisely how I’ve sometimes responded.
This, of course, has left her neither pleased nor amused. Anna’s reaction has often been that I was being flippant and not taking her feelings seriously. She was right of course. Asserting that I’m a sinner, blithely dismissing and failing to acknowledge the specifics of what I’d done, not only failed to increase our connectedness but, on the contrary, decreased it.
Sure, you’re a sinner, you make mistakes, and so on. But don’t use this reality as a ready-to-hand excuse, a way to fall back on an abstract generality to dismiss, diminish, or rationalize away a legitimate complaint about the concrete specifics of your words or actions. Such excuses never enhance communication.
Communication
