Word versus Deed
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Word versus Deed

Resetting the Scales to a Biblical Balance

Duane Litfin

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eBook - ePub

Word versus Deed

Resetting the Scales to a Biblical Balance

Duane Litfin

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About This Book

The Bible teaches that the church is called to a balanced ministry of both preaching the gospel in words and showing it with deeds. Yet the church has often found it difficult to find and maintain this balance. Today some are emphasizing deeds at the expense of words, while others hold fast to "talking" and forsake the doing. This is an imbalance that must be righted.

Standing at the helm of a leading Christian college, Duane Litfin has had a first-hand look at the issues students and alumni are talking about. Many Christians are excited to debate the importance of social justice and evangelism now more than ever before. Seeking to level the balance, Litfin steers the conversation toward the biblical harmony of word and deed, pointing out the church's tendency to overcorrect—either cutting out the preaching of the gospel or forgetting the application of action.

An elder statesmen in the church, Litfin's training in communication theory and in detailed exegesis is brought to bear on this important subject, bringing verbal proclamation in sync with the witness of one's actions.

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Publisher
Crossway
Year
2012
ISBN
9781433531156

PART 1

THE IMPORTANCE
OF OUR WORDS

CHAPTER ONE

VERBAL AND
NONVERBAL
COMMUNICATION

We respond to gestures with an extreme alertness and, one might almost say, in accordance with an elaborate and secret code that is written nowhere, known to none, and understood by all.
—Edward Sapir, 1949
If we are to sort our way through the “word versus deed” debate, the first thing we require, even before we turn to the Scriptures, is an appropriate framework for our thinking, one that will help us make sense of the issues rather than confuse them. This chapter is designed to provide that framework.
The categories we require are these: verbal communication and nonverbal communication. We have been using the terms word and deed, and it will be immediately apparent that these correspond directly to the terms verbal and nonverbal. The difference in both cases focuses on whether we are using words.
Both verbal and nonverbal communication have been the subject of almost three millennia of fascinating and useful study, so we may ask ourselves what insights this work might contribute to our discussion. If we can pause for a moment and focus on this question, much of what follows will fall into place.

VERBAL VERSUS NONVERBAL

The term verbal communication refers to all those ways we communicate using a linguistic code. We call the various linguistic codes “languages.” English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Japanese, Urdu, Swahili, Portuguese: all such languages are linguistic codes. Each of these codes has its own grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. These are the features we study when we try to master a new language.
Notice that the distinction here is not whether we are making sounds. That’s vocal versus nonvocal. For instance, writing is a form of verbal behavior because it uses the verbal code, but it’s soundless. Conversely, grunting is vocal (that is, acoustically conveyed) but not verbal. The verbal/nonverbal distinction has to do not with whether we are making sounds but whether we are using a linguistic code (language, words) for our communication.
Too often, the nonverbal component of interpersonal interchanges has received only passing reference or has been ignored entirely. Such oversight can lead to some erroneous conclusions about the interpersonal communication process.
—Judee K. Burgoon
If verbal communication depends upon words, the term nonverbal communication refers to all those ways we communicate without words. Verbal codes are notoriously complicated, as anyone who has tried to learn a language can testify, but the nonverbal codes are in some ways still more complex. There are no books of formal grammar for the nonverbal codes; nor, most likely, can there ever be. The nonverbal dimensions of our communication are too subtle and contextual to be captured so concisely. They are supremely nuanced and difficult to master. That’s why long after having mastered a new language, fluent speakers are often still giving off nonverbal miscues, picked up only by native speakers.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Humans communicate nonverbally in a variety of ways. We do not require for our purposes a detailed survey, but the following are some of the more obvious ways humans engage one another nonverbally:
  • Facial expression: Think of a smile, a frown, a look of concentration, or contentment. The face is perhaps the most expressive part of the body, followed by the hands.
  • Gestures: Waving, or pointing, or thrusting out the palm of the hand to halt someone are common nonverbal cues. Consider how effective speakers use gestures to enhance their messages. Some nationalities are known for “talking with their hands” while speaking. Others tend to limit their gestures.
  • Head position: Head position tends to correlate with perceived status. Deference is communicated with a lowered head position, while a high head position communicates the reverse. Hence the notion of “looking down our nose” at someone.
  • Eye behavior : Think of staring, rolling the eyes, winking, or refusing to make eye contact. Consider how subtly the eyes can express dreaminess, sadness, or interest.
  • Vocal inflection (often called “paralanguage”): Imagine two husbands saying to their wives, “You look great.” The one expresses himself enthusiastically, while the other uses a sarcastic “tone of voice.” The contrasting vocal inflections enable the same three words to express opposite messages.
  • Touch behavior : Touching, or the lack of it, tends to express relationship. The amount of touching, the location of the touch, the age and genders involved—these and many other touch factors communicate volumes.
  • Physical appearance and dress: How we dress and groom ourselves communicate more than we realize. We are constantly reading one another’s appearance. Studies show that the conclusions people draw about strangers, based solely on appearance, are often surprisingly uniform and accurate.
  • Posture: The popular term body language includes several of the above dimensions, but posture is one of its key elements. Consider how one’s body position can communicate confidence or fear, formality or informality, interest or indifference.
  • Use of space (sometimes called “proxemics”): We often use space to express, for instance, our emotional connections to others. Think of the closeness that informs everyone a young couple is newly married, or the distant demeanor, the standoffishness, of strangers or enemies.
  • Surroundings: Consider how much we quickly conclude about others when we catch a glimpse of the condition of their car, or their desktop, or their clothes closet. How we order our surroundings is one of the ways we communicate with those around us.
  • Actions: We are constantly assessing one another on the basis of behavior. Actions are not self-contained; humans draw inferences about what they cannot see from the conduct they do see. We “read” other people’s actions for their meaning, just as they do ours.
If verbal and nonverbal communication can be distinguished in theory, it’s also true that in everyday practice they tend to occur in concert. And we are usually glad when they do. Writing typically strips out the nonverbal dimension, leaving us having to read between the lines for the information usually carried at the nonverbal level. Interestingly, in our digital age so-called emoticons—for example, :-) for happy; :-( for sad; (*_*) for surprised—have been devised to offset some of this loss. Telephone conversations enable some of the vocal inflection to come through, but all the visual cues are lacking. Video conferences or meetings using Internet services such as Skype add some of the visual information, especially facial expression, but even here many of the other nonverbal cues available in face-to-face settings are lacking. Typically our interpersonal communication works best when both the verbal and nonverbal codes are fully available to work together.
The relationship between the verbal and nonverbal dimensions of our communication is itself a fascinating and complicated subject. These two communication channels work together in a variety of important ways:
  • Repeating: A woman forcefully points to the door and says, “Get out!” The nonverbal dimension of her communication is repeating the verbal dimension. Either might have stood on its own, but in combination her message is strengthened.
  • Complementing: When a speaker, describing the open plain he had seen, uses wide gestures with his hands and arms, he is using a nonverbal channel to enhance the verbal. The broad gestures alone would convey little, but when combined with the verbal description the gestures serve a complementing function.
  • Substituting: When asked if you will be attending the party you simply shrug your shoulders. You might have replied, “I’m not sure,” but instead you allow this common nonverbal gesture to convey your meaning.
  • Contradicting: We typically try to coordinate our verbal and nonverbal messages. You can experience this by trying a simple exercise: Say “yes” out loud while shaking your head “no.” It requires a bit of concentration because we are so used to coordinating our verbal and nonverbal messages. But sometimes the opposite occurs: our verbal and nonverbal messages contradict one another. For example, nervous gestures or telltale facial cues may alert us that someone is lying.
  • Regulating: We often use nonverbal cues to regulate the flow of verbal communication. For instance, we may use eye behavior (catching someone’s eye) to initiate the flow of verbal communication. Or we do the reverse: we use so-called exit cues (such as checking our watch) to terminate a conversation.
Human communication is an endlessly fascinating subject, and the verbal/nonverbal distinction is only one way of analyzing it. But these are the two categories that are most relevant to our present discussion. What can we learn from even this quick summary? The following insights are especially pertinent.
One cannot not communicate. We are constantly communicating with one another, if not verbally, then nonverbally. If we say, “I will simply remain still and say nothing,” our very stillness and silence are communicating.
The power of the nonverbal aspects of our interpersonal communication lies in their ability to express the affective dimension of our messages.
We tend to grant nonverbal messages more credence. When they contradict, we tend to believe nonverbal messages over verbal messages because the nonverbal dimensions of our communication are much more difficult to control. This is the working premise of lie detector tests. It’s relatively easy for those attached to a lie detector (polygraph) machine to deceive with their words, but the nonverbal indicators the machine is measuring (blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response) give them away. We can control our conscious words far more easily than we can control our often unconscious nonverbal messages, many of which we may not even be aware we are sending. That’s why when we must choose between conflicting messages, we tend to believe the nonverbal over the verbal. Hence the old adage, “Your actions speak so loud I can’t hear what you say.”
Nonverbal channels are especially effective in communicating attitudes, moods, feelings, and relationships. The power of the nonverbal aspects of our interpersonal communication lies in their ability to express the affective dimension of our messages. Whatever a speaker may be saying verbally, how she feels about her subject matter, or about her hearers, or even about herself is what tends to come across nonverbally. Without these sorts of affective cues, interpersonal messages often lack depth and dimension. But with them our communication achieves a greater richness. That’s why when it’s unavailable to us, as in reading a written message, we tend to feel the loss of the nonverbal dimension. We normally value and even depend upon the kinds of personal information nonverbal channels so effectively convey.
Nonverbal channels are inadequate for conveying cognitive content. If nonverbal channels are extremely effective in communicating moods, feelings, relationships, or attitudes, by the same token they are largely incapable of conveying cognitive, abstract, or historical information.
This is easily demonstrated. Imagine you have been assigned the task of communicating the following idea to a particular individual: Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court between 342 and c. 339 BC. Unfortunately, you discover that your pupil has no previous knowledge of either Aristotle or Alexander, what a tutor is, what Macedonia is, who Christ was, or consequently, what BC means. What’s more, as if your task were not difficult enough, you do not have the verbal code available to you. Your pupil does not speak your language and you do not speak hers. In other words, you cannot use words to express your ideas. All you have available are nonverbal channels of communication. How would you go about your task?
You can see immediately that your assignment would be impossible. You cannot communicate this type of content nonverbally. What facial expressions, or gestures, or eye behavior, or actions could express information about Alexander or Macedonia? The nonverbal code is simply incapable of bearing this sort of content. What you require is the verbal code—words and sentences and paragraphs—to convey your meaning. Without them your task is not doable.
Verbal behavior is neither unimportant nor dispensable. God’s revelation came to us, after all, not only in the living Word, Jesus Christ, but in the written Word, the Scriptures.
But wait. Perhaps with enough time, one might say, you could use pictures, or perhaps mime, to communicate these ideas. But that won’t work either. The more abstract the information, the more impossible your task. It would be a slog, but let us suppose you might eventually be able to use these channels to make slight progress in explaining what it means to be a tutor. But how could you ever explain who Aristotle was, or what BC means?
Mime artists intentionally forego the use of the verbal code, using only nonverbal channels to communicate their messages. But notice what they communicate and what they cannot communicate. Much of their art depends on the strengths of the nonverbal code (expressing sadness or happiness, for instance), and the rest depends on reminding observers, by acting, what the observers already know, either from experience or from what they have previously learned via the verbal code (e.g., in school). Without such props, not even the most gifted mime could explain to your pupil through actions alone who Aristotle was. Nonverbal channels cannot bear this kind of informational weight. Their usefulness lies elsewhere. If our goal is to express cognitive, abstract, or historical content, the verbal code is required. Words and sentences are simply indispensable.

INVALUABLE WORDS

We live in a day, as we have said, when the nonverbal dimensions of human communication (images, gestures, actions) are sometimes valorized at the expense of the verbal dimension. Visual media such as movies, YouTube, or video games are massively popular, while wordy endeavors such as poetry or newspapers have fallen on hard times. The tendency to trust and depend on language is sometimes denigrated, not seldom, we might note, by authors using words to do so.
Such critiques are not without their value. Yet Christians should resist acquiescing too quickly to these trends. Verbal behavior is neither unimportant nor dispensable. God’s revelation came to us, after all, not only in the living Word, Jesus Christ, but in the written Word, the Scriptures. What’s more, the use of the verbal code lies at the heart of what it means to be human, so much so that we can scarcely imagine life and society without it. We require language to speak of other people, places, and times (e.g., Aristotle, Alexander, ancient Greece); or to make statements that can be proven true or false (“My insurance company is the largest in the world”); or to express infinitely useful abstractions such as “chairs,” “Democrats,” “historians,” or “polynomial equations.” We use words to express the relative worth of something (“She makes the best coffee”) or to describe the nature of something else (“Wheaton is a liberal arts college”). We use the verbal code to express policies (“Copies must be paid for in advance at the front desk”) or to urge actions (“Jobs and employment should be the nation’s first priority”). And most wonderful of all, each of...

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