What does communication look like in community?
I'm not really talking about passing information along, but more along the lines of our interactions with one another.
The definition of communication is : a means of connection between people, and also, the successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings.
Every time we interact with someone, we're communicating.
We can talk about the different ways of how we communicate, but that's not nearly as important as what we're communicating.
So what is it that we're communicating?
As the Body of Christ, we've been given a charge: to express Christ.
But how in the world do we do this?
By living in the resurrection life.
Now, this all sounds good and easy, but I think that if it was as easy as it sounds, we wouldn't need most of the New Testament to explain what that looks like.
We call it the "cruciform", because that's the shape that it takes when Paul describes it. But the word "cruciform" - that just sounds more painful that resurrection life, doesn't it? I believe there's a reason for that: In order to be resurrected, you have to be dead first.
For me, this concept was completely foreign, and hard to grasp, to I'll share how I was able to come to terms with what that means.
We all live our lives, and because of the experiences we go through, we are conditioned to react a particular way to whatever life throws at us. For some people it's fear; for others, anger; maybe it's to become defensive; or maybe the fight-or-flight-or-freeze instinct kicks in. For others still, it may be a combination of the above, as plain rebellion.
For me, because of the life experiences I've had, the relationships I've been in, and the battles I've fought, I was conditioned to react with anger. I was quick to spout off verbal violence, usually threatening physical violence somewhere in there. This manifested into a mentality of "RETURN FIRE!!" You can ask my husband, he will confirm this. This slightest correction from him sent me into self-defense mode. And we worked together for years. There was lots of correction.
You can almost picture the visual: He would say or suggest something, and inside my head was like the helm of a battleship, with my broken emotions barking out the commands:
"Memory! Bring up some crappy thing he did 5 years ago!"
"Nerves! Be on high alert!"
"Mouth! Prepare to fire!"
But, at the right time, God showed me that this wasn't how it was supposed to be between he and I.
I'm sure that my husband was a little surprised when I stopped returning fire. In fact, if we got into a heated "discussion", I would walk away instead of engaging.
It was when I walked away that I would ask God what I was supposed to be seeing in our conversation. I would also ask why I felt the way I did, and here's the big one, I would ask if those feelings were even valid.
I didn't know it then, but I was beginning the process of dying-to-self. I was letting go of my flesh's reactions to life's circumstances, in order to let God begin the process of pruning me.
Once this process started for me, because it had everything to do with the context of my relationship with my husband, it seemed like our communication was faltering. Honestly, for a while there, it was.
Part of the fall-out from this was that I wasn't listening to him. By not listening, I was completely shutting down the possibility of putting myself in his shoes. I was still so focused on my own death on the cross, and not the other half of the equation - the listening- I began to resent him for being the one who put me there in the first place!
So there I was. Not listening to my husband, ignoring why he might have felt the way he did, and getting miffed at him for being the one who made me get on the cross. God reminded me that it wasn't my husband who put me on that cross, it was me. And I wasn't up there to focus on me, I was up there so God could do what he had to do.
Talk about a shift in perspective!
Over the course of this process taking place, I learned that the cruciform isn't just for marriage, it's for all of our lives. If I am truly interested in what God's will is for any person or situation, I have to be on that cross.
It might sound weird, or sound like I'm some glutton for punishment, but let me tell you... as painful as it is at first, the view from the cross is incredible. When you're on the cross, you get a different perspective: one where you can see Christ doing the most amazing things - things you never would have dreamt of, things so much bigger and better than you've ever imagined. From the cross we can see that we don't have the answers, but God sure does.
If we're going to express Christ, the only way to do that is from the cross.
Back to communication: Did anyone catch how the definition of communication said that it is the successful conveying of ideas or feelings?
If we look at the world around us, everyone seems to have a voice. Technology has given us the wonderful platforms of social media, empowering the masses to speak from their soapboxes. (Let the collective groan arise, because we all know what I'm talking about.)
But despite this amazing opportunity to communicate instantly, there really isn't much communication happening. For one, I wouldn't call any of it successful, and two, despite all the shouting, no one is getting to know (and value) one another, because no one's listening.
Every day, among the barrage of hot issues that plague our collective social awareness, polarizing statements are made. (Imagine the battleship again.) Someone responds emotionally with their opposition to the initial expressed viewpoint or statement. Shots are fired: both sides take hits. The damage is immeasurable.
What happens here is NOT communication; in fact, it is quite the opposite: alienation. Neither side of the exchange learned anything about the other side's views, because neither side was listening.
We as the church are not immune to this! When we engage in these kinds of interactions, we're making whatever that thing or topic we're fighting over our god. And no matter what we claim, when we make our position of self-righteousness more important than Christ and any kind of connection, we then become the exact hypocrite the world thinks we are.
When we are on the cross, God's goal becomes our goal. God's goal is community.
That means that when we're on the cross, we're in community. And when we're not on the cross, we might call it "community", but it's not God's community. It's the community that our own religion wants to establish. And isn't it funny how that community is headed by a Jesus who looks and sounds just like us.
Do we realize that when we're not on the cross and we try to act in community that we take up false authority?
Our authority - the authority we have in Christ - is only present when we're on the cross.
It's easy to tell when we're operating out of false authority, because we'll start qualifying our words with statements like, "telling the truth in love", or "the Bible says...".
Let me tell you: People, whether they've been in church their whole lives, or have never stepped foot in a church before, they recognize real love, because it sounds like communication and not condemnation.
So how do we communicate?
When talking about communication, I have a favorite saying. I used to say it to one of my troops in the Air Force who never shut up: "God gave you two ears and only one mouth for a reason."
We have to listen twice as much as we talk. And that's a skill that has to be practiced. One ear listening to the person we're with, and the other ear listening to God. And only then can we talk.
Too many people are in the practice of listening to respond (and defend themselves) instead of listening to understand.
Once we start doing this, we'll be able to start to see a bigger perspective; our worldview will grow, little by little.
We'll start to be able to see that we're different for a reason.
We'll start to realize that maybe, just maybe, God needs people who are different that we are, so He can reach people we can't.
Remember, Christ came for all humanity, not just the ones we like.
Learn about one another. Learn where we've come from, learn about our backgrounds. Learn about each other's audiences - the people we each influence. Learn about our fears, our dreams, our strength and our weaknesses.
We'll start to see how deep down, we're all connected. But this will only happen if we push past the fear that defines our comfort zones, the fear that prevents of from getting on the cross.
It's scary to realize, and humbling to admit that we don't have all the answers to the gigantic puzzle of God's worldview. It's also humbling to realize that we need each other in order to even catch a glimpse of what God is doing.
But that's a perspective we can only get from the cross.
