Communication

- 2 mins read

Why is it so hard?

It is hard by the nature of the elements involved. Claude Shannon invented a mathematical theory for it.(Warters 2012) On the sending side, you have the message, the source, the transmitter. On the path to the receiver you have a noise source that injects noise into your signal. On the receiving side you have a receiver that decodes the message and delivers understanding to the destination.

So, if Bob wants to tell Alice he loves her, He first has to find the right words (encoding) then choose a channel (speech, note, Facebook post, etc.) then send the message. Depending on the medium noise may be a problem, e.g. speech:birds squawking, note:poor penmanship, Facebook post:packet loss. The message then has to be received and decoded by Alice and then she can make of it what she will.

The effects of sin and the fall are in play too. We encode imperfectly, send imperfectly, protect from noise imperfectly receive imperfectly and interpret imperfectly. With all the possible points of failure, we often communicate poorly. A breakdown in communication is when we stop attempting to communicate altogether.

The One Infallible Inerrant Communication

God alone communicates perfectly. The scriptures in their autographs were a perfect communication. God spoke through His Son Jesus Christ. The communication was perfectly clear. People did not like what He said and sought to kill him.

God’s communication has a strange property; it is alive.

His living word is foolishness to a spiritually dead person. But once the Spirit of God creates new life inside, a person is able to receive it without prejudice and hostility. Then the Holy Spirit also illuminates His word to bring accurate understanding despite the challenges of transmission, language, culture and epoch.

The Possibilities when the Weakness is Removed

Imagine a world where no communication errors ever happened. The ability to produce would be exponentially increased. If humans produced good by default, earth would be a paradise.

Since the fall, human beings have producing evil by default, and God caused the confusion of languages to restrain the productivity of humanity. We Christians wait for a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness lives.

References

Warters, William C. 2012. “A Model of Communication.” October 24. https://campus-adr.net/ODRModule/a_model_of_communication.html.