Tag: communication

Love Letters of God

jamieahughes1 Comment

Of all the servants of Jesus Christ, the one with whom I most easily identify is the apostle Paul. He struggled with many of the same issues I face—pride and illness being chief among them—as well as a list of trials as long as my left leg. He went through a series of painful deprivations and punishments I cannot even imagine enduring. However, Paul is the man who also said in Philippians 4:11-12:

I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

I admire him because he both made statements like these and lived them out. Don’t believe me? Go read Acts 16:25, and you’ll find a man who has been beaten and chained to a wall who, instead of worrying or griping, is praying and singing to God. That is evidence of someone who is content in all circumstances!

Of all his amazing epistles, I believe 2 Corinthians is my favorite. The first reason is because my personal scripture, the one I use when I give my testimony, can be found there (12:7-10). It is the passage that helped me make sense of my disease, what purpose it served, and why God allowed it to happen to me. I feel a kinship with Paul for this reason because I know what it feels like when your body betrays you and you cannot live a “normal life” because of it.

Another reason I love studying this letter to the church is because of its personal nature. More of Paul’s heart is on display here than in any of his other writings. In everything he penned, his encyclopedic knowledge is made apparent, as are his rhetorical and philosophical skills. After all, this man, before being struck blind on the Damascus Road, was a Pharisee, a group of Jews who were highly respected for their learning and were considered to be the best and most accurate explicators of Jewish law.

In Galatians, he patiently and methodically explains why there is no longer a need to rely on the law for salvation, and his soaring language in books like Ephesians makes the spiritual inheritance all believers enjoy as clear and understandable as a one-bowl recipe. However, his work in Romans is his most masterful and still stands as the book of the Bible that Christians use to share the truth of salvation with non-believers (a technique commonly referred to as walking the Romans Road.) However, only in 2 Corinthians does Paul “get personal” and share his feelings and emotions as well as his thoughts.

I must throw a in caveat here. All scripture is inspired by God and given to men like Paul to compose and share with us; however, there is something of the scribes He chose in those works as well. Their diction, the ways they turn a phrase, and other little affectations show that while the truths are certainly God’s, there are flashes of the humans who served as His amanuenses as well.

Finally, Paul was a man who wrote beautifully but was less than impressive when it came to speaking in public, and that’s another reason I identify with him. I, too, am good with a pen and terrible behind a podium (especially when the speaking is extemporaneous!)

Because it is my favorite, I return to 2 Corinthians often for comfort,  to re-read familiar passages when the world seems to be out of whack. While studying it, I am reminded of why I trusted Jesus as my Savior and why I can stand firm on His promises no matter how unsettling my circumstances. Today, I was reading and came across a few verses I’ve read many times before. However, for some reason, it jumped off the page at me. It is 2 Corinthians 3:1-6, the passage in which Paul defends his authority as an apostle and a messenger of Jesus. it reads:

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

What struck me was the beautiful metaphor in this passage—“You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men.” A letter of commendation was a form of communication written by one individual to another “vouching for” a third person who was unknown to the letter’s recipient. (Yo hear them mentioned often in an Austen novel as “a letter of introduction.”) Essentially, it was a document in which one friend told another, “I know you don’t know this person, but I do. He’s okay; you can trust him.”

Paul is telling the believers at Corinth, “You are proof of my authority. You are a changed people because of the God who I serve. The fact that your hearts were renewed by the Holy Spirit is the only evidence you need to know what I say is right and from God.”

He then goes on and creates an extended metaphor from this original comparison:

  • “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men”–You are my letter, and all men can look at (“read”) you. They know you have been changed because of the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • “being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us”–You are, in truth, a “letter written by Christ.” It is He who has wrought such a change in your lives, and I, Paul, am but a steward. I care for you, but I am not your author.
  • “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God”–The change in you was not written in permanent ink but with the Holy Spirit. It is His indelible mark on you for all time as a child of God.
  • “not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”–You are His writing surface, and He marks you as permanently and definitively as He once wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.

That is simply amazing text! However, Paul follows it up with the best part of all. After explaining that his “adequacy is from God,” he explains the difference between the writing surfaces (the stone versus the human heart). When he states, “As servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit,” Paul is indicating we are not bound by the laws he knew so well. None of us is forever a slave to over six hundred laws that could never be perfectly followed and always required sacrifices for atonement. The covenant Jesus established at the Last Supper is the New Covenant, the one for which He was the atoning sacrifice that covered all our sins. This is why he states, “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Think about what this means. As Christians, we are walking, talking, breathing, living love letters of God. Each one of us is evidence, a letter of commendation others can read to learn more about Him. That is why our actions and our attitudes are so essential; we represent the Lord in all our daily dealings with the world. That is why one of the last things Jesus taught His disciples is important for us to remember; it is the essential rule we must follow in our role as His missives. In John 15:35-36, Jesus states, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (Emphasis mine).

Friends, we are truly the love letters of God, ones who must always strive to be accurate representations of their Author.

Like, We Don’t Talk Good No More and Junk

jamieahughes23 Comments

My friends on Facebook have been passing this image around for the past few days, and I believe no fewer than ten of them have posted it on my wall or tagged me in it on theirs. At first, it made me laugh just by virtue of the topic itself, and I then began to snicker at the sheer number of people whose first thought was, “I bet Jamie will like this” when they read it for the first time.

I’ve been called a stickler, a word nerd, and a nitpicky know-it-all. The labels Grammar Narc, Grammar Ninja, and a Grammar Nazi have all been written in haste and stuck to my chest like nametags. Oftentimes, people I know and love do it in jest, but sometimes the terms come across as slightly more pejorative than facetious. When people I meet find out I once was an English teacher or that I copy edit for a living, they throw up their hands and almost always reply, “I’ll have to watch what I say around you!” I guess they think I have a stash of red pens in my hair and am just waiting for an opportunity to wield them like a samurai on a battlefield in feudal Japan.

I hurl grammar with deadly accuracy!

When anyone on television states, “This works faster,” my husband knows I will reply, “…more quickly” and roll my eyes. I patronize Publix because it is the only grocery store I know of that has “10 Items or Fewer” on their express lane signs instead of “10 Items or Less.” (If you don’t know why the former is correct, I suggest you educate yourself about count and noncount nouns.)

Yes, I know all the proper ways to punctuate sentences and firmly believe the use of the Oxford is necessary, delightful, and apropos. I choose to use words like myopic, sententious, pulchritudinous, akimbo, and badinage because each of them has etymological value; they are a part of the history of the English language and deserve, like the Blue whale or the wild Mustang, to be preserved for future generations.

Voldemort cleans up nicely!

I’ve fought the battle for decades—as a writing tutor, an editor, and an educator—and I’m tired of apologizing for knowing the right answers and being derided when I ask others learn them. That’s why Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Finnes just moved from “Greatly Admired” to “Personal Hero” status in my book.

This week, he made his directorial debut with an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. When asked about the bard’s continuing relevance in modern culture, he stated , “Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.”

Mr. Twisleton-Wykeham-Finnes primarily blames social media sites like Twitter and sound bites for the atrocious decay of the English language, and I have to say that while I concur with him in part, I can’t lay the blame solely at technology’s feet. (Pun intended!) No one put a gun to our heads and demanded that we communicate in 140 characters or fewer. We chose to do so, and we did it with a reckless abandon that would make Syme clap his hands in glee because Newspeak has finally reached its zenith.

E-mail loosened the rules, but it is archaic for most people today, phased out in favor of texting, posting, and other forms of communication that take place via agile thumbs rather than dexterous minds.

The latest craze, which often leaves me gibbering like a low level inmate in Arkham Asylum, is the seemingly arbitrary addition or removal of letters from what would otherwise be a coherent sentence. For example, one of my former students recently shared this literary gem with the rest of us:

myyyy MOM saiddddd iiiiii cannnnnn goooooooooooo 2 the GAAAMMMEEEEEEEE 2niteeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! :- D <3<3<3

In case you don’t care to translate, the young lady was expressing her elation over the fact her mother had decided to allow her to attend a sporting event at school that evening. She drove the full measure of her bliss home by using a plethora of exclamation points, a wide grin smiley, and three hearts to show that she does indeed love her benevolent parent.

Like Dian Fossey, I spent many years living in the wild with another species (A.K.A “teenagers”) trying to interpret their body language and various methods of communication. From my research, I gleaned several interesting truths. One, if you add extra letters to the end of a word, it means that you are emphasizing it. Adults have been known to do this as well, typically in the interest of sarcasm—“I am sooooooooo tired of meetings!” for example. However, most people limit the effect to one emphatic word rather than appearing as if we took a header into the keyboard.

ALL CAPS, once a total faux pas on “teh intertubes,” is now acceptable for the same purpose. No longer are you “yelling” if you choose to lean on the caps lock button. Also, while most people can’t tell me what a homonym, homophone, or homograph is, they’re all for using it when it shortens the time between texts. Hence, the use of “2” for “to” or “too” in written language these days.

The removal of letters, mostly vowels, is also cause for great concern. It was all well and good when they lifted them on game shows like Bumper Stumpers, but to simply let them fall out of a word like loose teeth is deplorable.

If you’ve not seen it, this is what passes for thoughtful communication in some circles:

yeh dya remembr , i lst contrl! Nearly sure brad fell off!

I don’t have any clue as to the context of this statement, so I can’t help you with that. However, I think this roughly translates to, “Yes. Do you remember how I lost control? I was fairly sure Brad fell off of ____________.” (I couldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, so I added space where the unmentioned object he plummeted from belongs.)

None of the words in the “full length” sentence are terribly difficult to spell, but, for some reason, it is acceptable to cut them at will. Spacing between commas and excessive exclamation points in addition to all this makes me want to do an impression of Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

Like Cassandra, I’ve been warning others about the flippant usage of words and settling for “good enough” when it comes to communication. Words have the power to inspire people, for good or ill, and, like a weapon, they must be respected. God entrusted us with them for glorious and matchless purposes, and we’re squandering them, tossing them aside like disposable paper cups by a water cooler.

How different would the American Revolution have been had Patrick Henry not uttered sentences like these in his speech to the Virginia Convention in 1775?

If we wish to be free if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight!

What might our nation look like today without Martin Luther King’s rallying cry for brotherhood before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963?

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

I’m not asking for a total return to the rules of yesteryear. I understand that the English language is a kind of living, breathing creature with a mutability that has allowed it to flourish around the globe for centuries. This truth alone is enough to convince me it is worth defending, but even more precious than our language’s history is the desolate future we’ll surely face without it.