Communicate or Disintegrate

Today is a day of reflection for me. Today I turned 34 years old. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time this week pondering what defines me and what I’ve learned over these past years. Communication is at the top of my list.

Today our pastor, Dr. Tim Alexander, spoke about the power of life and death being in the tongue and tied the verse into communication in the family. I just wanted to share some of the highlights that I came away with.

Dr. Alexander quoted an author for stating, “Good is the enemy of great.” His point was that too often we become content with good and don’t strive for great. In a marriage, we could miss out on great things if we settle for only good things.

The most powerful part of the message for me personally was his explanation of how different men and women are in communication. He broke down the physiological differences that begin at birth and how men and women use different parts of their brain to communicate. For instance, a man generally is more analytical then a woman because his thought processes are dominated by that region of the brain. Conversely, a woman tends to be more intuitive. Men are created as the thinkers we are because shortly after conception a boy is bathed in testosterone which may modify the corpus callosum affecting the right and left brains ability to communicate with each other. Therefore, when you call a man a half-wit or state that he is thinking with only half a brain, you may be more correct then you thought.

This difference in the way men and women think and communicate may be why girls tend to long for a real “bad boy.” They tend to go to great lengths to find a male that represents manhood and then once they marry him they spend the rest of their marriage trying to turn him into a woman. This is demonstrated by all the sappy love stories they make us watch and forcing us to watch the Home and Garden network. Men are more interested in watching people suffer and destruction.

When a woman speaks to a man, she has to allow for a great deal of interpretation. Men and women hear things differently and we process them differently. Nowhere is this better demonstrated then in the case of Roger and Elaine.

Roger and Elaine have been dating for six months. One night in the car, Elaine brings their six month anniversary to his attention. This proclamation is followed by a silence that is very loud to Elaine. She interprets this silence for everything other then what it really is.

Upon hearing that it was six months ago that they started dating, Roger draws a parallel between that time frame and his last oil change. His brain is now processing and analyzing this time line. This is a really cute story and I encourage you to read the whole story. This story is comical, but more importantly, powerful in demonstrating how a man hears and processes information.

Summarizing his message in all seriousness though, is the concept that our words, in deed, our communication is very powerful. It can define how bad, good, or great our relationships will be. This is illustrated plainly and clearly throughout the Bible and even secular ideology emphasizes the importance and necessity of good communication. A relationship can only be as good as its communication and our relationships affect every facet of our lives. An example is that a company’s performance is limited by how well it communicates not only with its customers, but also with its infrastructure and investors. The health of a church body is dramatically affected by the health of the families that make up the body which in turn is dramatically affected by the ability to communicate effectively.

Thank you to Dr. Alexander for the inspiration and material for this posting. The Biblical text referenced is Proverbs 18:21, 1 Peter 2:21, 3:1-11.