Communicating Our Faith
By: Raymond Harris
Regarding Scripture: I Corinthians 2.1-5
Note to the Reader
Presently, I am conducting in-depth study and research on the influence and use of the Old Testament within the New Testament. This study has been scheduled for, at least, the remainder of 2009. As such, a Special Announcement was given in September.
In particular, this article is a revision of the article “The Simple Words of the Gospel” originally written by me in 2007. Additionally, I encourage you to invest additional time reading the Epistle of First Corinthians in conjunction with this article.
Communicating Our Faith
We live in a world that demands knowledge, understanding and wisdom. A world where careers and disciplines are built based upon them. Without knowledge, understanding and wisdom few people succeed. Take for instance the fields of: medicine, engineering, or science. Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom allow advances to be made in our knowledge of health problems, knowledge for designing and constructing almost impossible structures (e.g. the skyscraper Burj Dubai, and the brand new ship Oasis of the Seas), and knowledge that allows us to enter and explore outer space. Through their understanding, physicians, engineers, and scientists are able to see relevant and related conditions. Wisdom allows these professionals to make decisions that benefit all of humanity.
Communicating through Language
Knowledge, understanding and wisdom are in such demand for the previously mentioned fields that it is difficult not to transfer them into the Scriptures. Great good and great evil has been accomplished by humanity’s knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. But can humanity come to the Scriptures and expect human knowledge, human understanding, and human wisdom to explain faith? This seems a dichotomous situation. Here is the difficulty: humanity cannot communicate without language.
Take, for example, the Hebrew language. When two or more persons know the Hebrew language, they can communicate one with another. They can exchange knowledge, transfer understanding, and apply wisdom. In large part, the transfer of knowledge, understanding and wisdom is accomplished through the instrument of language, in this case Hebrew.
The world simply cannot communicate without language. Human understanding of the various definitions of words allows people to communicate. This allows people to communicate within a one-language nation, or to communicate across language boundaries. But this communications process is accomplished based on, at least, three human areas. The first area is our knowledge of vocabulary (even when multilingual). The second area of our understanding is how words form sentences. And, the third area is our wisdom that comprehends and acts upon the thoughts being communicated through the words making the sentences.
Knowing the previous, when humanity enters the realm of the Sacred Scriptures, we cannot help but utilize our human knowledge, our human understanding, and our human wisdom. We seem to have no other choice, we are, after all, human. The paradox is that God does not work through human communications alone, but by the Holy Spirit’s power. Yet when one is so moved by what they have learned from the Scriptures to the point they become observant of its precepts, how does that person then communicate their faith to an entire world? After all, we use language to communicate what we feel. We use language to convey what is moral. We utilize language to communicate what is understandable. We make use of language to express the things that are to be done. This seems to be a part of what Paul is addressing in this passage from the context of First Corinthians chapter two:
And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Communicating through Testimony
No matter our language (Hebrew, Greek, English, Spanish, German, Russian, or another language), if we are Christian, we have to communicate our faith, the Scriptures, and our faith through the Scriptures. Two questions that arise are 1) what language does the speaker use, and 2) what language level is to be used? Answering the first seems easy enough, the speaker should use the language of the hearer, if the hearer’s language is different; the situation seems to demand a translator.
Answering the second question, however, is a little more difficult. It seems that the speaker would need to use a language level appropriate for the audience. That answer may seem simple, and it may be when the audience has only a few persons, but the answer is not always simple when the audience is larger. With larger audiences, each listener’s personal background is varied, especially in a combined assembly having multiple educational and occupational varieties. With increasing diversity comes an increasing diversity of vocabulary. Knowing this, the speaker must be wise to word choices during the communication process. Audience size matters not, with each communications encounter the speaker and audience each make one large assumption – both the speaker and the listener(s) expect each other to be using the exact same word definitions.
The reason why this writer feels the need to state that each individual (both speaker and listener) has their own accepted vocabulary that works in conjunction with their knowledge, understanding and wisdom because both speaker and listener can have similar yet different social lives, business lives, and educational experiences. These are only three variables among many other factors (age, gender, cultural background, et al.). With these things in mind, it can become quite a complex task for one person to communicate their faith to someone else. For a Christian to communicate their faith to others, it seems appropriate for them to understand and be wise regarding Paul’s discussion of communication.
Conclusion
Christians do not need to possess Collegiate Degrees (Graduate or post-Graduate) or even a High School Diploma in order to communicate faith. But, disciples do need to know one thing: Christ and the purpose of His crucifixion. Like Paul, some disciples will experience fear while speaking, but it is not the persuasive power of the speaker’s vocabulary that moves people. No! As Paul said, it is the power of the Holy Spirit that moves people to the Gospel and to stand in the power of God. As someone has stated, humanity’s communication and reasoning are seasoning, the Gospel is the main course. May our Father bless us as we endeavor to flavor the main course with appropriate seasoning.
