Redeeming How We Talk: Discover How Communication Fuels Our Growth, Shapes Our Relationships, and Changes Our Lives

By Ken Wytsma and A. J. Swoboda

Discover why words matter in a noisy world

Technology has made it easier than ever before to share just about everything: pictures, ideas, even the ups and downs of your morning errand run. Yet all our talking doesn’t seem to be connecting us the way it promised to. That’s because we don’t need to talk more, we need to talk better. 

Redeeming How We Talk explores what the Bible has to say about that central aspect of life and relationships—conversation. The Scriptures show us that words have remarkable power—to create, to bless, to encourage, to forgive. Imagine how we, as Christians, could spark change in our families, churches, and communities if we learned to use words like Jesus did. By weaving together theology, history, and philosophy, Ken Wytsma and A. J. Swoboda help us reclaim the holiness of human speech and the relevance of meaningful conversation in our culture today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Jun 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780802496201

Ken Wytsma

Ken Wytsma is a leader, innovator, and social entrepreneur. He is the president of Kilns College, where he teaches courses on philosophy and justice. He is the founder of The Justice Conference—a yearly international conference that exposes men and women to a wide range of organizations and conversations relating to justice and the biblical call to give our lives away. Ken is also a church planter and the lead pastor at Antioch Church. He and his wife, Tamara, have four daughters.

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Introduction

When Language Gets Lost 

In 1970s San Francisco, an unknown man walks from his home to the Golden Gate Bridge. His mission is simple: to jump. Passing person after person, tourist after tourist, business owner after business owner, the man climbs the bridge’s four-foot safety railing. He jumps, falling 220 feet to his death.

During the course of the ensuing investigation, the man’s psychiatrist, along with the assistant medical examiner, discovered a note on his bureau. It read:

I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.¹

The image is so stark: a man walking to his death, the San Franciscans around him unaware of the lifesaving mercy they can show with the simplest of gestures. And if a single stranger’s smile could have saved this man’s life, what might a single word of kindness have done?

We have become a world of people all alone, together.²

Humans are relational beings. Handcrafted and honed by a brilliant, relational Maker, we are made to reflect His relational qualities. As such, we have been given power—the power to build bridges or build walls. Through our lives and interactions, each of us wields social influence and power that are rarely considered, barely understood, and often underappreciated.

Our lives, smiles—and yes, words—have power. Words can begin a war. Words can end a war. Words on a page can inspire a lunatic’s genocide. And words can begin a process of great healing. Words can fell a relationship or reconcile one that has long gone cold. Words can terrorize, and words can bear the gospel of peace.

How much time do we spend thinking and praying about how our words shape our lives? Not nearly as much as the time we spend using them.

Communication is one of the main ways we exemplify our humanity. And we are endowed with a variety of means to do so—a mouth, hands, facial muscles, and body posture. Whether through looks, words, gestures, or pictures, we all communicate. Even silence can speak louder than words. Whether it’s face-to-face, in a crowded restaurant, or online, we converse with others constantly.

Without communication, we wither away. Solitary confinement—the cruelest form of imprisonment—isn’t merely confinement to a physical space; it cuts off human communication and relationship. If human touch is withheld from babies during their earliest stages of formation, there is a greater chance they will die—even if they are properly nourished.³ And research reveals that suicide rates skyrocket among those who are disconnected from friends, family, and even church.⁴ We need other humans. Communication is what makes our relationships possible. Even the simple, nonverbal communication of a smile can be a matter of life and death in this world.

In recent decades a puzzle has presented itself. While the ability to communicate with one another is far easier now than at any point in human history, we are—more and more—experiencing the dark pangs of loneliness and isolation. The volume of communication is not bringing joy or meaning to life. We can gather information, share ideas, spread opinions, and disseminate lies quicker and easier than ever, all by virtue of electronic and virtual communication. We can Google information about a coming concert while texting a friend on the other side of the country and listening to a podcast. Though we may have incredible ways of communicating, we rarely know how to talk with one another. Though we communicate, we do not necessarily converse.

The conversational atrophy brought on by information overload is bearing demonstrable consequences on the fabric of human society. After the 2016 election, it was discovered that 47 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton did not have one close relationship with someone who voted for Donald Trump. Similarly, some 31 percent of Donald Trump supporters had no close friends who supported Hillary Clinton.⁵ We have become a culture of walls, not a culture of bridges. The political left and right no longer dialogue with each other.

Such information overload has, in turn, led to a breakdown in religious communities. Different generations increasingly look skeptically upon one another. Instead of talking with, we talk over or about, and though God is always building unity among His children, we seem to be increasingly working against Him.

The ability of humans to talk in dignified and respectful ways has fallen on hard times as well. It isn’t that the amount of information or words has declined, but rather that deep, transformative, and redemptive communication has fallen victim to the new realities of modern culture. Whatever the cause—maybe the internet, social media, television, or simply the pace of contemporary society—we are losing our ability to connect with one another. The Christian intellectual Os Guinness once wrote, The outcome of instant, total information is inflation—when more and more of anything is available, less and less is valuable.⁶

More than ever in our world of endless information, we must ask the deeper questions: Why has God given us the ability to communicate? Why do words have power? How does God expect us to use the gifts of speech and communication? How is communication in modern life transforming our use of words?

Forgetting How to Talk 

We speak all day but rarely think about the words we say. I (Ken) realized this on a recent trip to the Netherlands with my dad and two of my daughters.

I lived in the Netherlands between the ages of three and seven because my father had been stationed there with the Navy. These early childhood years are some of the most formative for learning a language, and I became fluent in Dutch. In fact, I became too fluent—or at least my parents thought so. Fearing I would lose some of my native tongue, they transferred me from a Dutch school to an English-speaking one. And when we returned to the States, I wasn’t allowed to speak Dutch, only English, so that I could catch up with my peers.

I distinctly remember the day my dad spoke Dutch to me again after two years of living stateside. I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. My ability to speak the language fluently and intuitively had vanished quicker than it had come.

Language is a lot like a muscle. Use it and it becomes stronger. Neglect it and it atrophies. To this day, I give my dad a hard time for having me speak only English during those years. I’m one of the few people I know who was bilingual but is no longer. I lost a language.

So on my recent trip back to Holland with my dad and daughters, I found it strange to experience the language. I was able to make many of the unique Dutch sounds and say just about any word (even a word I was told the Dutch used to root out German spies during World War II—because Germans couldn’t pronounce it correctly even if they spoke Dutch). I also felt a strange comfort around this language—almost as if it wasn’t foreign but instead familiar, though I couldn’t understand what was being said.

In similar ways, with the accumulation of words in our contemporary world, I suspect we have begun to lose the language or spiritual understanding of what God intended when He gave us speech. Maybe we’re awash in the material of conversation but not truly connecting with others. Maybe we’ve lost a language or at least the ability to use words well and respect their power.

More often than not, we don’t realize the power of our words to shape those around us. As followers of Jesus, we need to recognize that words will shape our environment. Our words have spiritual power. They change our reality and work in tandem with our actions.

Words are central to the calling of Christian faith, ministry, and witness. With words we write, preach, and teach. With words we lead, motivate, and inspire. With words we love God and our neighbor. In an age of fractured relationships, loving words and godly communication are how we mend our broken bonds.

In the pages that follow, we’ll synthesize theology and philosophy, and we’ll even offer a bit of self-help, to reclaim the holiness of human speech and the relevance of meaningful conversation for life today. In short, we’ll explore the conversational ethics of the Bible. We’ll look at what God says about our words and consider how we, as Christians, can use them to engage in rich, nourishing conversations that echo the voice of God and speak life into His world.

To renew our conversational habits, we must relearn the nature, purpose, and practice of godly speech. Only then can we be fully human, honor our Creator, and get closer to the deep relationships we all desire.

Will you join us in this conversation?

Chapter 1

A Creative Word 

Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing.

RICHARD ROHR

We hope it never comes to this.

But if, during the course of your life, you find yourself held hostage, crisis negotiators say there is one thing you can do that may very well save your life. And it isn’t necessarily to disarm your captor.

Your best bet is to talk about the weather.

Or your child. Or your job. Or your favorite band.

This may seem like an odd or even silly piece of advice, but time and again, professionals have seen people survive hostage situations through the simple act of small talk.

This is because conversation personalizes and dignifies us. People are far more likely to kill or harm what they perceive as an object rather than a person. Objects don’t make small talk or chitchat. Objects do not talk. Objects, such as rocks and paper clips and orange peels, just sit there quietly and have no feelings, no breath, no story. But people talk.

Our ability to speak with power and intention is one of God’s richest gifts. Without words, how else would we resolve our conflicts? God gave us words so that we would not have to turn to violence. The richness of language is God’s way of giving us tools to resolve our human relationships and also to be vulnerable and honest with Him. Words are an essential part of our humanity and what it means to be made in the likeness of God. They enable us to not only avoid or resolve conflict but also to bless God, bless our neighbor, communicate our feelings, sing our praises, and shout our joy.

If we are to study the biblical importance of words, we must look at the first words—God’s. His speech is the beginning and end of a theology of words.

God Talks 

The first thing God does in the entire Bible is speak:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…. And God said, Let there be light. (Gen. 1:1, 3)

So begins Scripture’s story of God and creation. Within the very first verse of the Holy Scriptures are three critical components of the nature of words.

First, and most importantly, God’s words are fundamentally creative in nature. What is God’s first act in the Bible? God said. He talked. Words were spoken. And what was the result of God speaking these first words? Light. The result of a word from God was all the light the world has ever needed.

But God does not stop there—God continues speaking. As a result of His continued speaking, the vault is created to separate the waters. Then the dry ground and the water in the air. Then vegetables and trees. Then the moon and the sun. Then the stars. Then the fish and the birds. Then the beasts of the land. Then humanity.

Each movement of creation begins demonstrably with a simple And God said … The lingering message conveyed by this rhythm is that God does not create the world with slaves, angels, subcontractors, or even His hands.¹ God creates the whole wide world with nothing more than His words. We live in a spoken world. All the created universe that one can see, taste, touch, and smell is created in one single chapter by a few words from God.

Words are in and of themselves creative. God does not ramble some magic formula or make a massive inspirational speech to a creation that already existed and just needed a little direction. There was nothing. Then there were words. Then there was everything.

The simplicity of this action demonstrates the power of God and the nature of words: they are paramount to existence. There is no such thing as an empty or harmless word. Speech is always powerful—whether it builds up, distorts, or tears down. Everything in the world is the result of words. It began with a series of words.

But the opposite is also true. Words can undermine all the good things that God has begun. This is precisely why the Hebrew tradition tells us, The tongue has the power of life and death (Prov. 18:21). Words can create and, as we will see, destroy.

Molecular physicists have theorized that every atom—if we could see it at its most basic level—is a vibration. In his book The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene suggests that, simply yet scientifically speaking, matter is music.² Biblically speaking, all matter is actually embodied sound—what Christians might describe as the words of God. God spoke the world into existence. In one sense the universe is God’s voice in physical form.

The second thing we notice about the nature of words is that all of this is done with just a few words.

In our own culture the assumption is often that we need more words to get things done. Edward Everett was the keynote speaker at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. He talked for over two hours. Immediately afterward, and so quickly that photographers didn’t even get a good picture, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address. It was a simple 272 words, and it took no more than two minutes.

God created everything with a few words. Likewise, Lincoln summarized the struggle of the whole Civil War. This speaks to the value of intentionality, not the number, of our words. We need intentional words, not more words themselves. Words are creative, even when they are few.

Let your words be few, the author of Ecclesiastes writes (Eccl. 5:2), and later, Of making many books there is no end (12:12). That has not been the habit of human beings. Jesus even tells us that we will give account for every word we speak (Matt. 12:36). James counsels us that everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry (James 1:19). Even Jesus chastised the Pharisees for thinking their prayers would be answered because of their many, rather than humble, words. Where we tend to multiply words, God opts for a few creative ones.

The third and final thing we’d like to point out is how words themselves have the power to liberate and set others free. God’s creative words not only made and animated us as humans, but they created freedom and space for us to live into our full humanity. God’s plan is, in the phrase of our friend Wynand de Kock, to make space for life.³ In the narrative of God speaking in Genesis, we hear a phrase repeated over and over: Let there be …

God’s creative process has been a point of great discussion among biblical and theological scholars.⁴ The famed Karl Barth argued that Let there be … speaks to God’s great patience. While God created with His words and spoke the Let there be, He still creates capacity for species and creation to change, grow, and reproduce. No other creation account depicts a God who extends this kind of freedom and generativity to what has been made. God creates the birds and the trees and the people to have freedom and be able to create—to have offspring, flourish, and, in Adam’s case, even name creation. The present world is the result of God letting things flourish and develop in their own creative ways. Let there be … is not only a mandate; it’s an invitation. God is no micromanager; His words extend creative freedom to His creation.

The Devil Talks 

God creates the world with just a few words. Likewise, Satan mars the whole world with just a few words.

Somewhere along the way—Scripture doesn’t specify when—one of God’s greatest angels, Lucifer, rebelled against Him. Also known as Satan, Lucifer is a created being. He is not an eternal being. There was a time when Satan was not. As with the

Reviews for Redeeming How We Talk

[deusvitae · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An exploration of the use of language in life and relationships.The authors look at communication in light of Jesus as the Word made flesh and the life-giving power in the Word of God. They explore the corruption of language in propaganda. They look at how information has been communicated throughout time, and the challenges which come from communicating. They also spend much time discussing how to effectively use language in light of what Jesus has done for us by exploring Jesus' use of language, the relationship between language and wisdom, the value and importance of hearing, the need for unity among the Lord's people, speaking words of comfort, and communicating more effectively and empathetically.Highly recommended.**-galley received as part of early review program