Be Precise In Your Speech - Part 1
This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark or photo to tie it all together.
Today's devotional is taken
from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos.
Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 10: Be Precise In Your Speech,
pp. 259-264
Opening
Thought: Every Monday I say to myself, I’m going to try to
cover like 20 pages of Peterson’s work, in the hopes to keep a good pace each
week. This hope is always derailed as Peterson covers so much in his pages. The
density and connectivity of his authorship is a true gift which means all he
says has purpose and meaning.
This is a very appropriate introduction
as Peterson’s tenth rule is, be precise in your speech. Peter opens by
making two important and under-considered points in regard to speech and meaning.
The first point is that the human
brain filters the information we observe into “useful” information. Every
morning when I am looking to brew a cup of coffee, when I see the coffee pod,
my brain does not review the details of its design and production, both the
human-engineered components of the coffee pod or the organic elements which
form the grounds within the cup. Nor does my mind consider all the nuances of
how the coffee got to be in my possession. I may consider all that if I was to sit
down and watch a documentary about coffee production, but at that moment that
information is useful to me. And, to a degree, these thoughts, knowledge
points, and additional questions can be found in my mind if my brain wanted to
focus on them, but in the moment of needing a caffeine boost to start the day, all my brain lets in is the designation of the storage boxes for the pods; one
says decaffeinated, and I avoid that one. Our minds must filter, or we would become
crippled by the overwhelming bombardment of stimulus. As someone with Attention
Deficit Disorder, this is something my brain struggles with. I both work best
and sleep best with white noise because it blocks out my mind from focusing on
too many competing thoughts. Even people with A.D.D. would still have filtering
ability too. This ability as Peterson says, “is the necessary, practical
reduction of the world” and “Our evolved perceptual systems transform the
interconnected, complex multi-level world that we inhabit not so much into
things per se as into useful things (or their nemeses, things that get in the
way).”[1]
Something I would add to
this is why people may develop some prejudices, if you have had a negative experience
with a demographic: race, ethnicity, sex, economic class, etc. your mind can
very easily assume that all the people who fall under the same classification
would cause a similar circumstance. This is not an assumption you would discern
over time, rather your protective instincts combined with this filtering
process will set up an early warning signal of unease to try to instinctively protect
you, even if it went against your cognitive reason. If you were bullied by the
quarterback of your high school football team, then you may assume all people
who play or like football are brutes, even if you could say aloud and recognize
logically this is not the case, you still have that internal resistance.
The second under-considered
point that Peterson makes is our minds have an amazing ability to extend their bodily
boundary to the outside world. For example, Peterson uses this example, “When
we extend a hand, holding the screwdriver, we automatically take the length of
the latter into account. We can probe nooks and crannies with its extended end,
and comprehend what we are exploring.” This extending of the self happened beyond
things we touch; we extend ourselves to other people in our lives. A friend of
a friend once equated parenthood as having your heart living on the outside of
your body. We can even go beyond close relationships, to the shared experience, go
to a horror movie or a stand-up comedy act to experience this firsthand. The self joins the crowd and the
experience of fright and laughter, respectively, becomes more powerful and
intoxicating because we are grouped together. Peterson makes the reference to
sports, as we watch our favorite teams (which we have also extended ourselves
into) we along with hundreds or thousands in a crowd will suddenly find ourselves
on our feet cheering in unison as we become engulfed in the euphoria of a touchdown or home run. You feel what the player feels, you feel what the crowd feels.
What is important to us, becomes an extension of us.
The everyday reality of our
existence is extremely complex. The world around us is more complex than our
minds could ever hold, hence we filter. Yet we too, like the world are incredibly
complex, our minds and souls extend outwardly, possessively, and commutatively
webbing us all together through a shared understanding. Clarity and precision in
speech, communication, and meaning become of the utmost importance, as it is the
glue that allows this reality, the human existence, not to implode on itself.
Opening
Prayer: Lord, help our minds appreciate the reality in which we exist. Our
bodies, including our brain, have built into their coding a wonderous array of mechanisms
that help us to live each day to its fullest. In this appreciation for our
creation, let us come close to You so that we may realize this it is faith in You
that transcends us beyond what our bodies can do, to the captivity of the
divine. In Your Son’s name. Amen.
Scripture: 1
John 4:1-3 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the
spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out
into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses
that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does
not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is
the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now
already in the world.
Reflection: Knowing enough of Peterson’s work I believe I see where Peterson is
going with this introduction to the complexity of meaning. In a world where things
are so grand, our mind must limit our intake to function, which means when we extend
ourselves into the world through association, we are also extending a limited
interpretation of truth. A collective of people can in so ways be an added
advantage for survival, if we all contributed a little knowledge, that pooling
of said knowledge would logically contain more knowledge than any individual. This
premise only works if people are both honest and precise in their knowledge and
how they share it. That means since people do naturally extend into the world
and form social attachments, there is a chance a group or identity can become corrupt.
The less insistence on truth and precision the more corruption can occur, whether
it is intentional or not.
I recently saw this error
of precision played out on a Christian YouTube channel where a pastor was reviewing the theological debate of women in ministry, and in this video, the pastor
was discussing views on the egalitarian position of women in ministry. In the video, he looks to N. T. Wright a well know and well-respected theologian to articulate
a case for women in ministry. N. T. Wright’s argument was based on a biblical
passage, but how he came to his conclusion from the passage was a bit vague.
The pastor in the video reached out trying to get a source for this conclusion,
and eventually, N. T. Wright offered that he had gotten the information from a
lecture. The lecturer which N. T. Wright had referenced had never published
anything on this particular topic, so there was no historical evidence to support
the theory. The argument N. T. Wright published in his work ended up falling
flat on its face because N. T. Wright overlook the precision in his publication.
He claimed something to be accurate without supporting research. As someone
who was very intrigued by Wright's argument, it was unfortunate to see this poor academic mistake being carried out. But we all make mistakes.
However, this mistake would
have gone unnoticed, if this pastor had not been testing what people claim as
truth or evidence. What we put into the world through speech and writing has consequences. I have seen this far more than I care to admit. Even in my
time in academic circles, many widely accepted “truths” or “beliefs” are
founded on false logic, circular reasoning, or misinformation, but they
continue to influence the next generation despite being corrupted.
The larger point is that
this kind of mistake takes many forms, and people are not practicing to ensure they are always seeking truth and being precise in their exchanges. This
does not mean you need to craft a bibliography for every discussion
you may ever have, rather just be mindful of what your say and how you say it. If
you fire off words without much thought, you run the risk of poisoning that
collective extension of yourself, the wider world.
Challenge for the Week: Think about what you are going to say, ask yourself is it accurate, and how do you know it is? If you speak without thinking, after insist a moment correct any misgivings.
Prayer for
your week: Speak to us Lord Jesus with your commanding
authority of truth, purpose, and meaning. Write into us a willingness to be
precise and truthful in all we do. In Christ’s name, Amen.
Final Thought and Picture: There use to be a commercial warning people of the dangers of drinking
and driving. It would show a clear image of the road ahead, but then a hand would
set empty beer glasses one in front of the other. With each glass the road got harder
to see, being blurred by the sudsy remains of the beer-tinted cups. When we are
unclear and lack precision, we suds up the clarity in the world. We aim for
precision because it promotes truth, and honesty, and give us sight to where we are
headed.
Comments
Post a Comment