Well, the truth is that both those professions require me to try to learn how to use more common words and less complex sentences than many of my teachers or textbooks would use, if I ever really want to communicate with anyone.
That’s one aspect of speaking to another’s understanding: that is,
speaking language they understand.
That counts whether we’re talking to people who are older or younger, less or more educated, who actually speak another language, or whose life experiences make certain words and ideas mean something different for them than they might mean for us. Need I say that doing that well takes a great deal of skill?
So, one option I have today is to spend the balance of my time talking about those skills. I could comment on avoiding technical terms, or unique slang expressions. I could talk about explaining ideas through stories and examples, or even pictures and music. I could share some information about avoiding ‘trigger’ words, or, at least, knowing what the trigger words are, so you know when you need to give context, provide definitions, or apply empathy, in order to avoid building walls in your hearer’s heart or mind. But I’m not going to talk about those things.
First, I’m no expert in all those things. Heck, when I wrote a letter to my kids as teenagers, trying to help them understand where their dad was coming from, the only response I got back was a scoffing, “huh, you sound too much like a lawyer”. Communication fail.
The second reason I want to by-pass talking about skills, is that even though learning skills is important in anything we do, they are always secondary to principles. That is,
it doesn’t matter much if you know what to do,
if you don’t understand why you do it.
This is especially important when it comes to the skills that lay at the foundation of good or effective human relationships. Learning how to communicate, for example, can easily become learning how to manipulate, if our hearts are not in the right place before we begin to apply what we’ve learned.
So I have decided to speak about what I believe are a few important principles for us, as Latter-day Saints, who – as parents, teachers, spouses, siblings, friends or missionaries – want to know how to truly speak to another’s understanding.
The first principle is easy:
Be Quiet. |
This idea is in the Letter from James, chapter 1, verse 9, where he says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak”. And in Proverbs we are told, “He who answers before listening – that is his folly and his shame.”
The same idea is expressed in a different way in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 10, where he says,
“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?”
We don’t expect people to pray to a God they’ve never heard of; and we understand the importance of having someone teach them about that God so that they can pray and have a true, personal relationship with Him. Yet we sometimes expect ourselves to be able to have relationships with one another, without listening to each other first. Worse, we expect to be able to minister to one another, to teach the Gospel, to help people find what will bring them happiness in their lives, without first getting to know who they are, what they are experiencing, and where they are coming from.
If you want to know how to speak to another’s understanding, you have to know them first. And how shall you know him or her of whom you have not first heard?
Listen first, speak later. That is the first principle.
The second principle I want to share is, example.
We all know that sometimes telling a story is a better teaching tool than, you know, teaching. It’s no mystery or accident that the scriptures are primarily stories. And even when they preach a little, it’s usually within a story-telling context.
The most important story that each of us has to tell is our own. And others see that story, and interpret our words by the way they see we live our lives.
You might remember a few General Conferences ago, President Uchtdorf quoted that lovely saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:
“Preach the Gospel at all times; and when necessary, even use words.”
Without delving into the politics of the day, we do have in the past week a very fine illustration of this. Many Canadians are now confused. Many are questioning things they believed in. Many are finding it necessary to reinterpret their views and adjust their ideas because of one’s man’s example being utterly inconsistent with his words.
If we wish to speak to another’s understanding, the last thing we should want to do is to introduce confusion, uncertainty or doubt by living inconsistently with the things that we say.
Principle number three – and now we’re getting into deeper things. The third principle I want to share was expressed by the prophet Nephi, when he wrote,
...when a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost, the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men. |
When you and I have the Spirit ourselves, then it’s not the forcefulness of our expressions, or the fanciness of our words that will help people understand us. We don’t have to be brilliant or poetic or crafty. What we have to have is the Spirit.
One of the most memorable experiences I have of my mission was when a brand new companion and I were teaching a single mother and her daughter who my previous companion and I had found through what we called “spiritual harvesting”. We had chosen the location we would go to, to knock on doors, by praying and dropping a pen or screwdriver on a map and seeing where it landed. It sounds silly, but it works. And we found this lovely family.
But then my companion was transferred, and I was a new senior companion, with a junior missionary fresh out of the Missionary Training Centre. Neither of us had excellent Japanese. His, of course, was extremely minimal. But we had faith, and commitment, and so, we visited and we taught.
I have no idea how much Mrs. Suzuki or her daughter understood of what we taught in the lesson, but as we closed I asked her who she would like to have pray. She invited my companion, who then looked at me with terror in his eyes. But he was as good, pure and innocent a man as you will ever find, and he obediently clasped his hands, bowed his head, and began to pray.
It was an infantile prayer. By which I mean, he sounded like a four or five year old child reciting the words he had learned in the MTC. But this was no infantile experience. No sooner had he offered his very short, very simple prayer than the power and presence of the Spirit spread through the room like a sudden, strong breeze. I felt it pass through me, and I felt sure that everyone else felt it too. We opened our eyes and looked at one another, and with a sincerity she hadn’t seemed to have just moments before, Mrs. Suzuki said,
“I want to know more about Jesus Christ.”
“[W]hen a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost, the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men.”
And, as the Lord said in the Doctrine and Covenants,
...he that receiveth the word by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth… |
Lastly, there is the principle that underlies even these principles.
It is the reason we would seek to listen, to be an example, and to communicate by the Spirit: it is the principle of love.
Robert E. Fischer, a Christian writer, once wrote that
“love is a language everybody understands”.
Love is what we express when we listen sincerely to understand someone else before we seek to be understood. Love is what motivates us to manage our own lives in a way that reflects the things that we believe in. And love is the key that opens the door to allow the Spirit in us, and to carry our words to others, in the hopes that their reciprocating love opens them up to receive those words.
As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity [the pure love of Christ], I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
I bear my testimony that when we strive to learn how to speak well, to use sophisticated words and smart sentences, we do a good thing; but when we hold back our words, and invest our time in listening to and learning about others, and developing faith, obedience, and a loving heart that reflects the love of Jesus Christ and allows His Spirit to speak in and through us, then and only then have we done what is needed to reach out to the hearts and minds of others in way that they can truly understand. I leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.