Communication....what does it really mean?

So we all talk about communication and how it is the most important thing that we can do in any relationship, but what does it really mean? Is it just talking and making ourselves heard, or is it deeper? Have you ever said to yourself, "Everything would have gone better had we just communicated better!" Yeah, I think we all have thought that. It then turns our thoughts to the question, what is communication really? On average, we communicate 14% with words, 35% with the tone we say the words, and 51% is non verbal....if that doesn't change your idea of communication, I'm not sure what will! We communicate so much that we might not even intend to send across the many lines of communication.

As a society we use sarcasm as if it were a religion. We can't/won't let go of it and it sometimes turns us into unintentionally rude people. Mis-communication, or misunderstood? This is the tricky part of it all. Is it the sender/speaker who sends the wrong message, or is ti the receiver/listener that is getting the message wrong? When trying to "communicate we go through certain channels that are most comfortable for us, and we wait for the person we are talking to, to tune into our same station so they can get what we are sending out. It's kind of our own personal code, and we are waiting for the other person to decode the message then send one of their own. Then we get to decode their personal code, and so on and so forth. It sounds like it can get a little messy sometimes, right? This is where I would love to bring in the scriptures. I spoke of sarcasm earlier, and brought in all communication, which comes down to how we control what we say.


In Ephesians 4:26-32, it talks about how to communicate. In 4:26 the JST says: can ye be angry and not sin? When we become angry we have already lost some part of our self-control. In 4:29 it says, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." Communications footnote talks about gossiping or profanity. We also talk about edifying. What is edifying? It basically tells us to only let edifying things come out of our mouths. Edify in the Merriam-Webster dictionary says, "To instruct and improve especially in moral and religious knowledge." We need to help people improve in their moral knowledge by them hearing what we say. Are we saying things that are uplifting, or are we always putting people down? To edify is to build upward, to lift. How are we helping people with this in the long run?


I know that if we are able to communicate clearly and be transparent and help uplift people we will see a definite difference. People will want to talk with us more and ask for our advice because they know that we will be kind to them. This is the ultimate goal, right? To let everyone like and trust us because of how we have always treated them.