The Message and The Method

“The Medium is the Message.”  –Marshall McLuhan 

The studies on non-verbal communication I have been able to find, say that somewhere between 55% and 90% of our communication with others is non-verbal.  This means that the actual content of what you say is less than half of the total message you are sending out.

This fascinates me.  How much of what I am communicating am I completely unaware of?  Am I sending the message I mean to be sending?  Do what I say and how I say it cohere?  Do I ever say non-offensive, day to day living type statements, but communicate hurtful or angry messages?  Do my words and how I say them align?

I have a friend who considers herself a Christian and is dating a non-Christian.  She has some friends in her life who are concerned by this.  They believe that to pursue this relationship could be both difficult and spiritually damaging to her.  These friends care enough about her that they don’t want her to end up in a difficult or painful relationship. 

Regardless of whether you agree or not, you can at least understand the position these friends are in.  The desire for her a life filled with love, joy, peace, and wholeness and are worried that the path she is on is actually taking her away from this life.  They want more for her.  They want a life of wholeness, peace, and love.

They want her to experience peace.

 They want her to experience the fullness of love.

They don’t want her to be hurt.

Now, one of her friends have reacted to her in a way that… baffles me.  This friend essentially ended their friendship, cut off all contact, because this young woman is dating a non-Christian.  She didn’t merely express her concerns.  She didn’t say she cares and is worried.  She didn’t merely say that she wants the best possible life for her and explain why this path may not lead there. 

She took away her love. 

Kids know what this feels like.  Kids know the difference between when I parent disciplines them out of love and when a parent removes their love to discipline them.  Kids know when a parent has set boundaries with consequences but still deeply love them even when they cross those boundaries, and when a parent chooses to use belittling and ignoring as tools to control the child.  Kids know when I parent is sending the message, if you act like that, I won’t show you love.

And adults know when that message is being sent too.

And my friend gets ignored and unloved in the name of love.  How messed up is that?

I want a life full of healthy love for you, and since I don’t think you’re on that path, I refuse to speak to you. 

They content of the message and the method of carrying it out are opposites.  They contradict.  Unlove doesn’t communicate love.  Its discontinuous, fractured, duplicitous, broken, with the message and the method not unified and whole but rather, fragmented and contradictory. 

Fragmented. 

Broken.

It reminds me of something Jesus once said.  Have you ever heard what Jesus said the most important commandments in life are?  Have you ever heard the answer was love God and love your neighbor?  Well, that’s wrong. 

Sort of.

According to Mark, Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was and he responded by saying, “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel:  The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these.”

Did you catch that first part?  The Lord is one.  God is one.  For over a thousand years this had been the center of the Jewish faith.  That God is the one and only God, and that he is one, whole, unified, complete, and true through and through.  There is no duplicitousness in God, there is no fragments.  God is whole, true to himself, and authentic.  His word and his essence are in complete agreement.  His message and his delivery are unified.  What he desires and how he goes about working towards those desires line up in total unity.  He is whole, unified, true. 

Man, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve let myself off the hook because what I said to another person was not unkind, when in fact I knew the way I said it was unkind.  I have excused behaviors that hide who I truly am, hiding behind “humility” when I just am scared to let others know the true me.  And please don’t take a close look at my beliefs and how well they line up with the actions in my life.  A nice safe view from a distance is what I would prefer you to have. 

I pray that I would more fully live like my Lord.  I pray that I would unified and true.  And I pray that my message and my method would be one and the same. 

Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin, a comedian with a show called “My life on the D-list,” recently won a creative arts Emmy award.  In her acceptance speech she said, ” A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus…  Suck it, Jesus.  This award is my God now.” 

William Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights responded by saying, “The ball is now in Griffin’s court, the self-described ‘complete militant atheist’ needs to make a swift and unequivocal apology to Christians.  If she does, she will get this issue behind her.  If she does not, she will be remembered as a foul-mouthed bigot for the rest of her life.”  

She will be remembered as a foul-mouthed bigot for the rest of her life…  Perhaps this was Mr. Donahue’s opinion of what simply would occur, but placed right after a demand for an apology it sounded more like a threat when I read it. 

Its fascinating, I stumbled across this story while taking a break from studying for a talk I plan on giving this Sunday.  The central idea is that we are meant to align our lives with the characteristics of God (ultimate reality).  That we become most fully alive when we imitate God.  The actually teaching I was reading right before I saw this news story was the teaching where Jesus was telling his followers to forgive and love their enemies and to, “Be merciful just as God is merciful.”

N. T. Wright explained it this way, “You are to be like this because that’s what God is like.  God is generous to all people, generous (in the eyes of the stingy) to a fault: he provides good things for all to enjoy, the undeserving as well as the deserving.  He is astonishingly merciful… how can we, his forgiven children, be any less?  Only when people discover that this sort of God they are dealing with will they have any chance of making this way of life their own.”

To my brothers and sisters in Jesus, I say, may we demonstrate the great, generous, surprising, forgiving love of God in the way we speak about and to Kathy in the days to come.  May we be merciful just as God is. 

To Kathy I say, I am sure you and I see the world very differently.  And I understand that in comedy nothing is taboo, you make your living by being outrageous.  But even though I was offended, please know I choose to forgive you and hold no evil feelings towards you.  And I believe that’s just what Jesus would say too. 

4 new talks

We just posted four new talks that I did this summer at The Gathering.  You can access them via itunes by clicking here.  I genuinely would love to hear any thoughts or feedback on these if you listen to them.