Have you ever thought about how you define words? Who or what is your source? Do you rely on the worldly definition? Spiritual? And, is how you apply, the operational definition of interest or concern? Another way of asking these questions are: do you apply worldly definitions to spiritual questions and how do you make ‘operational’ your definitions? Of equal interest is the question of whether you are intentionally aware of how others ‘interpret’ your words… do you ever provide your definitions as you speak or do you assume everyone is ‘reading from the same playbook’ or ‘is on the same page’?
A different way of looking at this question is: is your purpose to communicate? or is it to hear the sound of your own voice? The latter may sound harsh but we have all been in situations when the speaker seems more intent on what s/he is saying than what’s being said. And if someone has the audacity to ask a question when the speaker is taking a breath, it totally unnerves the speaker because they hadn’t planned on any interruption or participation in their ‘presentation’.
Maybe it’s because I am extremely fond of the English language or maybe it’s because early on I learned that it is the message that should be the focus, but definitions are critical for understanding and understanding is always a goal. You can agree, you can disagree but if you really aren’t speaking the same language you’ll never know if you are communicating what it is the listener is hearing. Nor will you really know if the other person is agreeing to or disagreeing with the message… and why. We’ve all witnessed times when we’ve observed two people saying the same thing but using different words. And we’ve also seen that what appears to be agreement is almost diametrically different.
The more we intersperse our conversation with questions to assess understanding and the more we focus on making the message ‘logical’, the more we will find that we are able to dispel misunderstandings as we respond to questions or disagreements before we continue the communication. This becomes even more important when we are sharing/witnessing to others. We can’t expect someone who is asking questions about the Lord to know the spiritual definitions – providing this should become part of our testimony. Church-ese tends to use special words with special definitions but these are words that also have a worldly definition so a new mindset is important. As you witness you really are also teaching.
