Just talk to me

     Every type of communication is designed to emphasize something in particular and, therefore, it creates and supports a certain type of person and culture. The old hankie and key chain codes in the homosexual community indicated what they wanted out of another person. Similarly, prostitutes communicate with their clothing the way that they want others to treat them economically. God gives His people His own way of communicating with each other that facilitates our growth towards Him. Even the way the church came up with our universally-accepted closed canon reveals His path of other-centered communication.

 Finally by the late 4th century in the Greek East and the Latin West there was a wide (but not absolute) accord on a canon of twenty-seven works. This standardization involved churches accepting from other churches books about which they had some doubts, and such “ecumenism” reflected an increasing contact and communion between the East and the West. Origen went to Rome and learned the biblical views of the church where Peter and Paul had been martyred and which had struggled against Marcion. On the other hand, later Western thinkers like Ambrose and Augustine became familiar with the works of Origen and through him with the biblical views of the highly literate Alexandrian Christianity. The most learned Latin church father, Jerome, spent much of his life in Palestine and Syria. Thus, in a sense, the larger canon in the 4th century, like the shorter collection in the late 2nd century, testified to the experience of what Ignatius had earlier called “the catholic church.” (Brown, Raymond Edward. An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 15) 

The early Church fathers valued each others’ views enough to listen intently to them, and this action was used by the Holy Spirit to decide upon our Scriptures. Stanley Hauerwas also notes the importance of “a community’s internal conversation with itself concerning the various possibilities of understanding and extending its life.” He states, “In fact, the discussion necessary to maintain the tradition can be considered an end in itself, since it provides the means for the community to discover the goods it hold in common” (Bolton, Wayne G., From Christ to the World. p. 41). In the grand conversation of the church, we hear God speaking to His body through His various members.

     A very good friend of mine from high school, though not a Christian, was the best conversationalist I’ve ever known. She had an amazing ability of asking questions of you that helped her, and you, discover what was important to you, who you really were, and what you could be. As Augustine taught, “He truly loves a friend who loves God in the friend, either because God is actually present in the friend or in order that God may be so present. This is true love” (Sermon 336, 2.2).  My friend, though she didn’t realize it, was exploring others through her questions to find God in them or so that God may be so present. But she also answered your questions and responded to the comments you made. She knew that what she thought was valuable, too. Conversations with her could be a two-way street.

     My husband once pointed out that people generally have one of two motivations for talking. We either talk for our own benefit or for the other’s benefit.  Once we realize the truth of this it doesn’t mean that we should never talk to please ourselves because we need to love ourselves as well as others. But it really does help to start thinking about our motives in our conversations with others and work on pressing into loving each other with our questions. Christians should be the best conversationalists on the planet.  The way we communicate, either linguistically or sexually, can express the truth of God being “for us,” or we can lie against how God has created humans and live in self-absorbed death.