Typical Problems: General Principles of Communication

Communication as a Key to Conflict Resolution

Alright. Well, good morning. Good morning. Am I on? Okay, I am on. Alright. Well, when I was here last, we were doing a series of lessons on communication and conflict resolution. And I didn't really finish what I wanted to do on that, and unfortunately I have too much to say on that, which may be a problem considering some of the things that we're going to be talking about today.

But, you know, when words are many, transgression is unavoidable. But this is a topic that is of great interest to me, and what I want to do over the next few weeks is I want to do, well, it'll be more than a few weeks.

It'll be a while. I want to do a series of typical problems, okay? So we're going to address a series of typical problems that most people struggle with, and one of the main ones is communication. And, you know, in fact, when you think about the nature of the way communication works, if you can't communicate with another individual, you can't really solve any problem, right?

So if you can't talk, you're stuck. You're on a stalemate. There's nothing you can do. So in some ways, getting biblical communication right is the key to getting, resolving any of the other problems.

And I'm not trying to say that I'm going to provide you techniques that a believer or an unbeliever can use irrespective of their salvation status and come to success. I mean, the key is obviously, again, the gospel and the Christ and regeneration and the power of the Holy Spirit at work inside of you.

But what God does when He changes your heart is He teaches you to walk differently. And what I am trying to say is communication is very important. Learning how to talk to each other, learning the problems, like learning to identify the problems that many people face in communicating is very important in order to deal with most of the other common problems that people will face in this life.

And so this is certainly an important subject matter that we have to think through. And the Bible doesn't spare words in describing the nature of the difference between good communication and bad communication.

I mean, you can just read through the book of Proverbs. You're going to see that a significant portion of the book of Proverbs is dedicated to sins of the tongue. Okay? So, these are just important issues that we should be talking about.

Now, this is going to be largely a topical study, meaning I'm going to be appealing to many different passages of Scripture, not just one particular one. But then I do want to start out our time here today by reading a passage of Scripture that we're going to be going through in our discussion on communication in general as like a primary launching point, so to speak, for what we're doing.

I won't be referencing it so much today, but it is good to think through what it has to say. And that passage is Ephesians 4, 25 through 32. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Let no corrupting talk come from your mouth, but only such as good for building up as it fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed on the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Now growing up I you know I looked around the world that I was living in and one of the things I realized is it was very very difficult to know how to communicate with basically anyone about anything of importance, right?

So I think most of my childhood I would say that I felt significantly misunderstood in certain ways and part of that was because I had different kinds of concerns than most of my classmates seemed to have and so most of my classmates growing up, I went to public school, so most of my classmates were mostly they mostly seemed to be entertaining, you know thoughts about entertainment and everything else and I was concerned with a lot of things that were more substantial in my own mind and one of the things I realized is I just had no ability to talk to them about anything significant whatsoever and communication was difficult.

Why Communication Is Hard

I would say communication was very difficult for me in particular for a variety of reasons but one of the things I realized is communication is just hard in general. Growing up one of the things I realized was.

That most.

People seem to jump to very quick conclusions.

About.

Why I would make a particular action, right? So I would do something and they would jump to very quick conclusions about that.

That.

It was interesting to me because I wasn't emotionally invested in their misunderstanding. I was emotionally distant from it but I could look at it objectively and say something off is going here, right?

There's something off. There's a disconnect that's happening. I'm saying something and they're assuming I'm saying something else and then what I found was there's almost no way to figure out how to correct those misunderstandings.

Do you understand?

Meaning.

I'm communicating to people and what I noticed was that they're jumping to wild conclusions about what I'm trying to say and I don't know if it's a me problem I'm communicating poorly or if it's a human problem.

At the time I don't really know what was happening but what I would notice is they would jump to these conclusions and then I would have no ability to step in and try to give them a little more information and try to help them understand what was actually going on, right?

But then one of the things I've noticed over the course of counseling, one of the things I've noticed over the course of life in general is just the way people are. Like people are very poor listeners okay?

Like we're very poor listeners we jump to conclusions very quickly. We very easily make very poor assumptions about other people thinking that we know what's in their heart when we don't, right? We're often very uncharitable in our reading of other people and all that shows up in communication so we're very quick to violate almost everything the Bible has to say about communication and we don't often realize it and when you encounter a relationship that's beginning to go off the rails, one of the things you'll realize is that basically all the things we're going to talk about today are being violated in a wide variety of ways.

Reflexively like not just I'm not just saying there's sporadic violations what's symptomatic of those kind of relationships is that there are deep problems at the level of communication that have gone unaddressed for a long time and there's certain patterns of communicating that have just been ingrained in the individuals to where that's normal for them, right?

And so sometimes when you walk into a relationship like that which are dysfunctional or whatever to use a euphemism you'll notice that what's normal to them is very bizarre to you because maybe you've adopted like different patterns of communicating but they have no sense of awareness that this is actually deeply destructive in the way that they're communicating and so what I'm going to do today is today we're going to talk about communication as I said among a list of typical problems and today this isn't really going to be providing you an outline on how to fix these problems, right?

This is just going to be a general overview of communication problems that happen, okay? So this is like you may come away from this encounter thinking man what a mess I don't know how to fix it and that's fine just come back next week and we'll talk about it, right?

So that's what we're going to do. So today is just going to be largely descriptive like descriptive of the nature of certain problems that happen and it will provide a little hope there as well but that's what's going to happen just to set your expectations.

In the right.

Kind of way but one thing to realize as I've already said communication is very difficult and the Bible acknowledges this over and over again. This is not just an observation that people make that it's hard communication is hard particularly it's hard for members of the opposite sex to communicate with one another.

There's all sorts of landmines that can happen with that but the Bible is very straightforward and up front about the fact that communication is hard. James 3, 2, and 8 says for we all stumble in many ways and if anyone does not stumble in what he says he is a perfect man able also to bridle his whole body but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil. It is full of deadly poison. So that's about as strong a statement as I can possibly think of to describe the reality that communication can be hard. No human being can tame the tongue.

Proverbs 10, 19 you may be more familiar with this. When words are many transgression is not lacking but whoever restrains his lips is wise. As you read the Proverbs often the solution to avoiding sinning by speaking is just simply not to speak and that's kind of funny when you think about it.

I mean there are times obviously to speak. There's ways you can sin by failing to say what you should say but the more you speak the more you open yourself up to transgression. That's a continual message of Proverbs.

Ecclesiastes 5, 2 says be not rash with your mouth nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God. For God is in heaven you are on earth therefore let your words be few. There's many passages that are similar to this.

I mean there's a wide variety of reasons why communication can be difficult in the best of circumstances. It can be difficult because we all have sinful hearts. We're all selfish. We all typically want what we want when we want it.

We all wake up in the morning thinking about our own priorities. We all wake up in the morning thinking about our own values. The things that we want to do we naturally try to care for ourselves and take care of our basic needs.

If you just kind of go on autopilot one of the things that you'll realize is that you are typically the center of your thoughts. Now for mothers who are breastfeeding or something like that you may find that you don't have time to think about yourself because there's other people screaming at you asking you to do things but generally speaking the way it works in life is that we do naturally think about ourselves first.

There's.

An.

Interesting phenomenon that people have to where I don't know if you guys experience this temptation but many people experience the temptation to view the people around them as if they're like NPCs. They're the main character in their story and everyone else is an NPC and there's a technical term for this and I forgot what it is where suddenly it kind of dawns on you that the person you're interacting with is the main character in their own story who has a life that's just as complex and everything else is you where you just have a moment of awareness that this is not just like a projection of my imagination this is like a real person here and they think of me as the NPC.

That's naturally the way that we are tempted to think at many times and so because of things like that it means that communication can be difficult because we're naturally oriented towards ourself. We have a sinful heart.

We need God's help to actually help us to communicate in a way that honors Him and I would say that it's also difficult because there's a lot the Bible has to say about communication and it's quite frankly it's not simple to put it all together and to do the right thing in the right moment.

I'm not trying to say it's impossible I'm just trying to say it takes some work, it takes some thought, it takes some discipline to know what situation you're in in order to communicate in a way that glorifies God.

Ways to Demonstrate Yourself to Be a Fool in Conversation

Now as I said this is largely going to be negative today so we're going to talk about some ways in which we violate God's commands and so the overarching heading that you should be thinking about is this.

There are many ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool in conversation. There are many, many ways and Proverbs frequently uses the word fool to describe people who make the kind of errors of communication that we're going to be talking about today and part of the problem is that we so frequently violate all of these things and yet the Bible doesn't mince words about the nature of what that makes us.

Do you understand? So as you're thinking about the nature of these errors that we're making, you ought to you ought not to say hey this is normal like therefore it's kind of understandable, therefore it's kind of okay like the Bible uses very strong language to describe these kinds of errors and that should cause you to pause and think I don't want to be that.

Does that make sense? Not in some self-righteous way where you're trying to earn merit before God or something along those lines but one of the things that we should do when we're thinking about certain problems that we experience is we shouldn't treat them as if they're normal and then therefore expected and therefore kind of respectable and okay.

We should you know if you want to what I want you to have is I want you to have a sense that I don't want to be characterized by these things and God will describe these in pretty strong language because you know it does not honor Him.

It doesn't honor the Lord.

When we.

Give ourselves over to very foolish manners of communication it's very destructive to our own personal relationships it's dishonoring to Him and we should want to with our whole self distance ourselves from these practices and habits.

So as I said there are many ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool during communication and one of them I would say is probably one of the most common ones that we do and that is to give an answer before you hear.

So Proverbs 18 .13 says if one gives an answer before he hears it is folly in shame.

Okay.

Now I mean there's one of the most.

Um.

Frustrating things I think about getting advice from other people and I'm sure that you've probably been in many scenarios like this where someone is trying to give you advice or trying to give you suggestions but then they're doing so in a way that doesn't fit the situation.

I've often found myself in this kind of situation where I want advice from people. I'm actually, I mean there's been times where I'm just coming to them for advice and what I'm realizing is they're not asking any questions.

They're not like trying to understand the situation at all. They're not gathering any data they're basically just taking whatever whatever thing worked for them in their situation and then they're telling me authoritatively I need to do it.

And I mean I've been in plenty of situations like that where I actually want to hear what they have to say but then I'm realizing that they're missing some major details that if they could just figure out how to understand then they may like switch the nature of what they're saying and actually have something helpful to give me but then they don't and so what they're doing is they're essentially giving an answer before they hear and as I say this is just a common temptation.

It's a temptation that you'll face. I'm sure that our default in general as it relates to communication is just to offer suggestions and offer advice and typically what we do is we assume that everyone is the same as us and thinks the same as us and goes through the same things in the same way as us so we assume that their situation is probably comparable to ours and then we think about what would I do in that situation but then we don't ask enough questions to try to figure out if we're even understanding what's happening.

And really if you do want to help people and you should because God's put you in their life to help them one of the things to realize is that you're not going to be able to really help them unless you first understand.

Them.

Understand who they are, the nature of their problem. When I'm doing counseling I often try to ask about.

Two hours worth.

Of questions before I give any advice that's just typically what I do. I'll try to ask about two hours worth of questions and that's like questions all over the place. There's different types of questions that you can ask like very general questions and very specific questions.

Like in the counseling language sometimes we describe general questions as like shotgun questions because they're very general. They spread out, tell me about your life tell me about your background tell me about your relationship with your family tell me about your work.

Those are very general kind of questions. And then there's like maybe like a sniper rifle kind of questions that are very specific and very direct and very pointed. Where were you when you did X.

What time was it.

That kind of thing. Those can be very specific but the issue is if you don't ask questions what you're going to do is you're going to assume that you're going to take whatever you see happening from the individual and you're going to fill in the context and the details and everything else you're going to fill it all in with things that are related to you.

Right.

And part of the problem is the bible says no temptation is overtaking you. What's common to man. There's a commonality to all of our experience and yet at the same time we can have some very very different experiences.

One of the things I've noticed being married to Elizabeth is that our upbringing was very very different in a lot of ways. Our background was very very different. When you get married one of the things you notice a big problem.

There's three major problems people, maybe four people have when they come to counseling. One is sex, one is money.

Right.

Others, in-laws. How to deal with. In-laws, in-laws is a big deal. I won't give you the whole list.

But like.

The issue is we have very different backgrounds and there's so many over the course of I guess 14 years of marriage now we've discovered that our impulses are very very different in a wide variety of situations because we have very different backgrounds, very different upbringings our understandings about what we need to do at holidays are very different birthdays are very different.

My parents are very frugal in certain ways. I'm thinking, give the kid 10 bucks that'll be fine, right. Happy birthday, you save it up all year you'll get something, because that's kind of what we did.

But then.

Her family killed a fatted calf.

Or whatever.

Even if you can't afford it whatever their understanding of an appropriate birthday present is like 100 bucks or 200 bucks. I'm thinking what could I have done with 200 bucks as a kid. It's very different but what I'm trying to say is that every single point we just have different backgrounds different experiences feeding into misunderstanding and then I can look at her.

I can look at her. She's engaging in a particular action, I read it through the lens of my background, my experience my temperament, everything else. I can just come to some pretty bad conclusions, and I often do so.

What I'm trying to say is there's many ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool during communication. One of those is to give an answer before you hear and I would say that this is a very very common problem.

We don't ask enough questions we don't get enough information we make a bunch of assumptions and we give people advice often that really does not fit their situation.

At all.

The Folly of Talking Too Much

Second way, talk too much. And as I said, the Proverbs seems to mention this over and over over and over and over again Proverbs 10 19, when words are many transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

A lot of these things seem to build off of each other in the sense that if you give an answer before you hear it's following shame. But then one of the things one of the barriers that keeps you from asking the questions that you should be asking getting the information that you should be asking is the temptation just to talk too much.

So.

People can talk too much for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes people just talk a lot because they're nervous. When I'm I have a brother who will remain nameless and I won't tell you which one.

I have several brothers, but one of my brothers whenever I'm in the car with him he seems to be allergic to silence or something.

Like that.

I'm good, I'm good, I can just sit there and I can chill, I don't have to say anything but then he'll look over at me if I'm not saying anything. He's like, are you mad at me? It's like, no, what are you talking about?

I'm fine, you know.

It's like, well you're not saying anything. What is there to say? Do you want to talk about something? He's like, never mind.

But I mean.

There is a temptation just to talk too much. Sometimes people just have a need to fill every single empty word with every empty space with words. A lot of times people who talk too much are doing so because they're bragging about themselves and about their accomplishments and about their achievements.

I mean you can listen to people who that's all they do, they just brag about themselves over and over and over again. This is a list of all of our accomplishments. And then you can do that with your children too like a list of all your children's accomplishments.

And so getting together with them involves you listening to them basically tell you all of the wonderful things that they're doing and their family is doing so. I mean it can be an occasion for pride.

I mean it can be an occasion just to express your opinion. A lot of people a lot of people they desperately want to be understood. And when conflict starts to happen what you do in order to try to be understood is you ramp up the words.

And that's often not helpful because if you're not dealing with someone who wants to listen you can throw a thousand words at it and it's not going to help.

So.

Ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool. Give an answer before you hear. Talk too much. Are you guys aware of the joke about the Supreme Court Justices right now.

With.

Have you seen the word comparison between Katonji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas along those lines. So I mean I think Clarence of all the Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas has the fewest words right.

And then by a power of I don't know if it's like six or ten or something like that you have Katonji Brown Jackson trying to show herself to be in charge and capable and everything else. I mean that's just a dramatic example of the kind of thing that we're talking about here.

Right.

More words is not necessarily better and then the need to talk more you know often demonstrate yourself to be a fool. Make no effort to understand. Number three. So the proverb says a fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion right.

So the fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion. I mean that's kind of like a radical way of redefining the nature of what you're even doing in communication for many people.

Like many people think the way that you communicate the thing that you should.

Um.

Your goal in communication is to express yourself. Right. And that's certainly what society is teaching you is the importance of expressing yourself right. But then biblically speaking it's way more important to understand other people than it is to express yourself.

And we would do better to make the goal of our communication to be primarily centered on trying to understand rather than to be understood. And you understand like you're at a vicious stalemate when you have two people who are viewing communication as an opportunity to be understood what happens is they just go back and forth trying to be understood and no one understands anything right.

Do you understand what I'm saying.

Like if two people are competing over being understood and no one is trying to listen then all you get is two people yapping at each other. Right. And that's certainly a significant problem. And certainly yeah I mean in your classic example of an argument I mean argument is a neutral word that can be used in a wide variety of ways.

I mean argument. You can say I'm presenting my argument right which is just my opinion backed by reasons for a particular proposition. But then typically when you think of an argument you think about an angry disagreement which is noisy and unpleasant.

And in that stereotypical argument what you have is you have two people who take no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing their own opinion right. That's what you have. So you have two people fighting to be understood while no one is trying to actually understand.

Ignoring Wise Counsel

4D.

Whatever.

Ignore wise counsel. This is one of my favorite verses in the bible.

Um.

And not just because it's funny but I do like it. But Proverbs 12 1 whoever loves discipline loves knowledge but he who hates reproof is stupid.

So.

You know I I really recommend that you be the kind of person who makes a habit of going to other people and asking for advice. I really recommend that you make that as a habit not just like um a lot of people are so afraid of asking for advice it's just not like a natural part of their personality right.

And.

So they treat like they're afraid to ask for advice. And part of the reason why they're afraid to ask for advice is because they're proud. They're proud. And they don't want people to know that. They don't have it all together.

And a lot of times in churches what you have is you have a bunch of people who are getting together trying to collectively pretend like everything is alright. Right. So they're trying to collectively pretend everything is alright.

We all have it all together. We don't need any help. We're okay. You know we don't want you to know. And then you know when they get desperate then they finally get around to you know maybe asking for help.

But then they're not used to asking for help. So but they know they need help but they're not used to it. And so because they don't have a pattern of actually trying to get advice then they can get really resistant to anything that anyone will actually tell them in that moment.

Right. And so what I'm trying to say is the Bible says whoever loves discipline loves knowledge but he who hates reproof is stupid. The Bible over and over again tells you that other people are put here to see things that you can't see.

And a lot of that's just like a biological reality due to the nature of the positioning of your eyes and your head. Do you understand. Like think about the way your eyes are placed in your head. They point outward.

What does that mean. I can't see myself. I can't see my facial expressions. I can't see my mannerisms. I can't see how I appear. I can't see how I come across. But but I can see very clearly how you appear.

Right. I can see very clearly how you come across. I can do that. So you know what do people do in relationships. Well they very naturally and easily see all the faults in other people. And none of the faults in themselves.

Right. So some of that I'm trying to say it's like a biological reality that it's harder to see yourself. I mean you know throughout the history of the world mirrors weren't even invented. Right. We didn't have mirrors throughout the history of the world where you can see yourself clearly everywhere you go or something along those lines.

Like some people don't even know what they look like. You know they see their reflection in the water. And then they get shocked at what they see. Right. Oh that's me. But then that's what everyone else sees.

And so the point there is just to say that we should be cultivating the kind of character the kind of character that is quickly and eagerly asking other people for help. I mean when I was a young single man I would do this.

And I recommend that you do this if you're young and single even if you're a woman that's not the point that was.

Unnecessary.

Conclusion you jumped to right there.

But.

No I mean I would go to older people and ask them for advice and just see what they had. You know tell me about marriage. What are the biggest problems in your marriage. What are some of the challenges.

How have you learned to overcome them. What are some things that were helpful. What are some things that were difficult. I would just ask people. I would ask everyone that I came across. How did you find your spouse.

What did you do. Right. I wanted to figure out how to do this because it seemed like it was impossible to find a good woman. So how did you find your spouse.

What do you.

Think I should do. You know a lot of single people don't even think to ask those kind of questions. Isn't that weird like they don't even think to ask like they want to be married. They want to be married there's no one in sight and then they don't go around asking people for help.

And it's weird to me right.

I thought.

Why wouldn't I ask for help. I don't know any women. Where am I going to find them. You know it's not like I'm in the bible times where I can just see a bunch of them dancing and go grab one or something right.

It's not that. It's not that kind of thing. So I need help. Someone's going to have to introduce me because my prospects are grim at the moment you know.

So.

But look I mean what does it say. Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge he who hates reproof is stupid. We should be people who are asking for advice. We shouldn't be people who think we have it all together.

You should be trying to look to godly people in your life and you shouldn't expect perfection of that. You know a lot of people say hey yeah I'm open to getting advice from people. But I just don't know anyone I would actually trust to get advice from.

It's like it doesn't matter just ask people for advice and see what they give you. I mean you're not duty bound to do everything they say. But I mean the thing is if you ask ten people for advice you're going to get ten different suggestions and you're going to have to filter through it but at least you got information to work with.

And maybe some of it's good right. So it doesn't matter like that. I mean you shouldn't. There's no perfect people. None of us are perfect. But maybe you'll get some good stuff.

In there.

Anger, Rash Speech, and Venting

Okay five. Quickly angering and speaking in anger. This is a way to demonstrate yourself a fool in communication. Quickly angering and speaking in anger. James 1 19 says know this my beloved brothers that every person be quick to hear slow to speak.

Slow.

To anger again emphasizing the importance of understanding right. I mean over and over and over again repeats the same ideas in different ways but this one is tied to anger right. So anger is a thing that keeps people from.

Being.

The listeners that they should be. Right. So know this my beloved brothers that every person be quick to hear slow to speak slow to anger. Once you get mad you know your listening ability dramatically tanks at that point right.

So if you had any to begin with when you get frustrated it's gone. I mean as a check in my life typically.

In moments.

Because I know how blinding anger actually is I'm often trying to. If I'm in a conversation that's unpleasant I'm trying to ask myself.

Like.

Am I able to think clearly right now in this moment you know is my. Are my emotions stable. Am I calm. Like. Because if I'm not then I know that whatever ability I think I have to listen in that moment is probably not there do you understand what I mean.

But if I know that like internally I'm calm and my head is clear that often gives me a little more confidence in moments that are tense to look at it a little more objectively and to not necessarily just be my own personal accuser in those moments.

But I mean I assume that in general when I'm communicating that there is going to be a lot of temptation that I'm going to have to want to argue my own case. There's going to be a lot of temptation that I'm going to have to not try to listen not be trying to understand.