Join us now for the chapel hour coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today's message was given during a recent business luncheon held on the university campus. Following the introduction by Dr. Dick Stratton, our speaker will be Dr. DeWitt Jones, Chairman of the Division of Speech Communication at BJU. The title of his message is, Communication Says It All. Our speaker today is Dr. DeWitt Jones. Dr. Jones is the chairman of the speech communication division here at Bob Jones University. He has been here for many, many years in that he doesn't look very old at all, but he has been here a long, long time. In fact, there is this one thing I was thinking about today when I was thinking about how long he has been here. Back in the, oh, this has got to be 30, 35 years ago, something like that. was part of the singing Christmas tree. He directed the program for the singing Christmas tree, and I, in my acting debut, was Tweedle Dee, and he helped me to be the appropriate Tweedledee. And that was really my first encounter with Dr. DeWitt Jones. So I really appreciate his ministry in my life. But actually, the reason that he's here is to talk about biblical communication issues. And I'm so glad that he's willing to come and I'll turn the rest of the time to him. Oh, my. Thank you, Dr. Stratton. And That was an example, certainly, of one pulling oneself out after getting into that hole, and I thought you did it very well. You know, you have the picture of a person who's going off a cliff, and as they go off this cliff, suddenly they realize they're out in the thin air and reach back and desperately grab a branch that's hanging out from the side. So, excellent job there, Dr. Stratton, in grabbing that branch. Now, we're talking about communication. And from what I've heard just sitting here, it sounds like a lot of that has been going on during this mealtime, so I'm not sure if I need to really say anything about it or not. You know, there's also, I need to mention here, there's some advantages and disadvantages to wearing bow ties. One of the advantages, it is very difficult to get gravy or soup on your tie, unless you really are super sloppy, one or the other. On the other hand, Bow ties are notorious for not staying on the level. And one side will tip a little bit one way or the other. Now, my wife usually will cue me in on this when this is happening. And so from time to time, when it's taking place, she will reach up and she'll get a pull on her ear like this. And so I think she means that I need to speak a little louder. So I try to get a little louder. And then she realizes I'm not getting the message, so then she will subtly do this. And if you know anything in the media, that's a sign for quit, cut, stop. So I think things have really gotten bad, so I just sit down right in the middle of it. And a lot of audiences are rather surprised, but not altogether disappointed. So my suggestion to you today is if this thing really gets cockeyed, going one way or another here too much, if everyone will just lean in that direction. And when I see everyone falling out of their chairs, and I will know I need to make an adjustment. We are all involved in the communication process. Top executives, major corporations, 178 messages on average per day. That includes faxes, emails, voicemails, telephone messages, and interpersonal face-to-face communication. I know at one time I thought email was a wonderful thing. That stopped some time ago. Average business executive, 75 to 80 percent of his or her day is spent in one form or another of communication. And most of you who are involved in the business world can verify that as you sit here this, what is it, afternoon now I guess. But very important while we're engaging in a lot of communication. To realize that communication in and of itself is not the solution to all of our problems. Sometimes we hear and we read that our problems are just a lack of communication. So if parents could just communicate with their children, then things would be better in the home. If husbands and wives communicated more, the situation would be better there. Israelis and the Palestinians could communicate with one another, we could solve the Middle East problems. Unfortunately, communication itself is not necessarily a solution or a panacea to all of our problems. Marshall McLuhan, who was somewhat of a, I don't know, an avant-garde guru in communication theory back in the 60s, early 70s. had a profound impact on a lot of direction of communication studies. And one of the statements that he made that gained a lot of popularity was, the medium is the message. The medium is the message. And where McLuhan was coming from, he went back and he looked at the development of the various media of communication and the impact upon society. And he started with face-to-face communication and the idea of the small village, the small community, and everyone spoke to one another and you retained your history in an oral fashion. And if you wanted to send a message to someone else, then you physically had to go there, which is where we get our marathon race from today. Because when the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, they simply couldn't send a telegram or pick up the phone. They had to send a runner to Sparta. He wasn't really in good shape because after he got there, gave the message, he died. So not the best thing in terms of marathon runners, but simply because they had to have face to face communication. But then we moved another step and we went to manuscript communication. And in the manuscripts, this is where everything had to be written. And of course, much of our Bible, the scriptures come to us because people copied by hand the scriptures so that they could be preserved. Then we move to the next phase and finally what he called the Gutenberg revolution and the Gutenberg revolution the development of printing press and suddenly everything changes because now the ordinary person has access to information that they never dreamed of accessing before. And in fact the Bible could become available to the ordinary person because of the development of the printing press. And then the last stage of development. McLuhan identifies as the electronic medium. And he would include in that radio and most particularly television. And especially with television McLuhan argued that we had come in a sense full circle. And that where we started in a face to face type of environment in a small type of community that now through television and the electronic means we had shrunk the world into a single village. And in fact McLuhan used the term the global village because once again communication was predominantly oral and in one sense a face-to-face type of communication, a visual communication that was involved. McLuhan argued that society was profoundly affected by each of these periods of the communication process and he is right. Certainly major changes in our society, But McLuhan goes on to say that the medium is the message and that's the problem. He goes too far with it because it is not just the medium. It's not just the nature of the message. The content is critically important. And to those of us who are Christians that content is absolutely important that it must be the right kind of content that is being communicated and not just communication itself. David Berlow, who's one of the pioneers in the development of the study of communication theory, wrote principally in the 1950s, and in that wrote some of the earliest textbooks on communication theory. And again, Berlow was exploring this idea that we can solve our problems just through communication, that this is the answer. But the more he looked at it, the more carefully he examined it, He saw how fraught it was with problems and breakdowns and difficulties and how unreliable the communication process is. And so consequently in frustration Berlow wrote this sentence at the end of one of his articles. We cannot put our faith in communication. Yet increasingly that's all there is to put our faith in. When I read that article, my heart broke. Because I said, here is a man who is looking for answers. And what does he have to do? He comes to a point that he's got to take an existential leap of faith. He says, we need to solve all of these world problems that are out there. How can we do it? We've got to bring people together for communication and do it in that way. But then as he looks at communication, he sees that's not going to be the solution because all of the inherent difficulties that are there. And he has nowhere else to turn and he goes back to what he knows doesn't work and won't solve and says, we just have to take this blind leap of faith and believe that what won't work will work. How sad, how frustrating. In fact, in his article, the first time I read it, I made notations in the margin and said there are sermons in this article and there have been. And what Burlow's assessment of communication. Communication is not going to solve our problems because the root problem is in the human heart. And we're not going as long as there is greed as long as there is sin as long as there is that old nature of selfishness that is there unless we change the human heart. We're not going to change the way we deal with people and we're not going to make the world a better place. Can we improve some situations through communication. Yes we can. Can we make some circumstances better. Yes we can. But are we going to solve all of the problems. No we are not. It is only by the message that is there that is communicated and that message that can change people's lives and change the nature of our society is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ not just communication. It's what are we communicating. The second aspect of this some of the risk of communication. One writer has said. The most dangerous thing I do every day is to communicate. Sobering thought most of us don't look at that way we think about getting out on the highways or getting on a plane or some other things. The most dangerous thing I do every day is to communicate two reasons there are others but one communication is inevitable. Interesting statement that goes along with that one cannot not communicate one cannot not communicate as long as there is someone else out there who sees you who sees what you do and how you behave and how you respond and they assign any meaning to that at all. Communication has occurred whether you wanted it to or even whether you knew it. How many times have you had someone, you know, walked by you, just happened to me the other day, and someone walked by and I was getting ready to say hello, and they just were looking the other direction completely, and I thought, huh. Why did they look up and say hi? Intentionally it was somebody I knew. Were they intentionally avoiding me? So it certainly started me thinking and raising questions about why that happened. Now my hunch is it was probably accidental. They were lost in thought about a course or class that was coming up and some other pressures. They didn't even realize I'd walked by. On the other hand, they may have intentionally not wanted to say hello. I don't know. I can't imagine that being the case, but nevertheless, there's a theoretical possibility. But you see, we do that by just some, I used to, I would sit in the back of a class at times when I was, before I got these, and it was right at the point where I was beginning to need them, and I would be sitting in the back evaluating students' speeches. And I wasn't realizing what had happened, because not only was I beginning to need glasses for things at a distance, but I also have a terrible habit that when I'm really concentrating an intent on something, what I do is I tend to wrinkle my brow. And I frown a little bit like this. You know, I'm really into this thing. And so I would be sitting in the back of the room. Student is giving a speech. I'm squinting to see the student and I'm frowning at the same time. The student thinks, you know, I didn't even know this was taking place. And I'm sending a horrible message. And finally, one day, some student got up enough courage to say, Dr. Jones, why are you so upset with what I'm doing? I said, I'm not upset. You're doing great. It was what you're frowning at me. I said, what? Yeah, all of this. And wow, so now when I sit back there I think, OK, get the brows smooth, OK, get the glasses on, you know, smile big, all of this type of stuff. Because I was sending messages I didn't realize, and you're doing the same thing. People are decoding from just our facial expression, our movement, our walk, the tone of voice, all of that. And they are assigning meaning to it, and many times we are totally unaware of it. But secondly, communication is irreversible, and that's the one that really, really scares me. You cannot subtract communication. Pilate said, what I have written, I have written. What we have communicated, we have communicated. I can add to it. I can say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. I apologize. We can do all of those, but all we have done is add to it. And the receiver will decide, hmm, which one did they really mean? The first time? Or the apology? Or the explanation? Is it just politic now to come back? Which one of those messages do we accept? I know in my own life, and I suspect it may be true for some of you, there's some little periods of about 10 to 15 seconds I would love to have back. And I can't get them back. I can say I'm sorry, I apologize, but I can't change the damage that was done in those 10 or 15 seconds. That's what makes communication really scary. But notice quickly some of the responsibilities of communication. The scripture gives us some very clear guidelines and I don't have time to develop all of those. Just want to mention a few here that we should certainly avoid. Scripture talks about evil speaking in a number of different places. Exactly what evil speaking is, it's very hard to define. It's one of those things that I think we recognize it when it occurs, but it's difficult to put a label on and say this is exactly what evil speaking is. It can take a number of different forms. When you look at it in the context, it always occurs around other words such as wrath, Anger, malice, clamor, that's the company it keeps. And it's always set against that which is gracious or edifying communication. Murmuring. Murmuring, that's that undercurrent. When we don't like a situation, we've got a problem, somebody offends us. That's never the way to solve a problem. Scripture provides mechanisms for dealing with problems. I'm not going over that because we did that in February. We talked about conflict resolution and there are specific mechanisms to use to deal with it. But a mechanism that is never allowed is simply that under the breath, murmuring, complaining, just talking to somebody else what we don't like rather than trying to go to the person and solve the problem. argumentative spirit and this is one that's difficult for me because the way it's translated in the King James most of the time it doesn't say argumentative spirit it says debating and I coach debate here. So I have to find a good translation that fits for me. So it is just really a cantankerous argumentative spirit that's there. One of the former deans when I would be discussing, we'd be going over some personnel matters, and the comment that he had that was so appropriate, he would say, that person was born in the objective case. And that's what argumentative spirit is. Backbiting, once again, simply undermining or undercutting what is being done. But the thrust that I want to really underscore is the last one that's on your sheet. Not just the negative, but the positive. To speak the truth. Brad Blanford, psychologist, author of Radical Honesty, says, Lying is of epidemic proportions in America. Epidemic proportions. And interestingly, as I was reading in the scriptures this morning, I noticed in Psalm 12 and verse 2, and it says, Every man lies to his neighbor. And I thought, wow, how reflective that is of our society today. Every man lies to his neighbor. One study reported that 91% of us lie regularly every week. A majority of people cannot get through a single week without lying. 20% said they cannot get through a single day without telling a significant lie. I thought this was interesting. In a 1998 study, 70% of physicians would create symptoms so patients would not be put out of hospitals. Now, we can be a little more sympathetic with that, can't we? We have had relatives, perhaps some of you, in a hospital, and you don't feel it's time to go home. And so discussions here, can something be adjusted or a little bit of change in the diagnosis or something else the doctor orders so you can stay there a little longer. It's not needed. It's not necessary. And he's not really telling the truth. A lower percent so they would change the billing matters so it would be covered by insurance. Now these are instances where deception is not for the benefit of the person telling the lie but for someone else. But in fact that's not generally the case. Seventy five percent of our deception is usually for us for the person telling the lie. Out of all of this, one of the worst cases of deception, it just is abominable, I discovered last year. And this was a doctor in a South African hospital. He admitted in writing to a serious breach of scientific honesty and integrity. by lying about the conduct of experiments which claimed to show that high doses of chemotherapy followed by bone marrow transplants were more effective than existing treatments for breast cancer. In other words, he was lying about his research in treatment for breast cancer and, in fact, the potential to cost the lives of many, many people. And he was doing it simply for his own prestige. I wish we could say that's an isolated case. Unfortunately, it isn't. Now we can accomplish lying in one of two ways. We can actually falsify the information or we can just be silent. Most of us had rather be silent. It's a lot easier and we can claim well you know I was going to say something about it later on. And in fact a lot of people would not necessarily even include that silence is lying. But Dr. Paul Ekman, who is a psychologist and author of the book, Telling Lies, talks about this particular experience and he gave, this is a secular psychologist and his standard of truth, I suggest, is higher than many of us would have as Christians. Ekman says this, that if my high school son comes home and while he was in high school, he got into trouble with the principal. And he was called or got in trouble was called down to the principal's office and it was fairly significant trouble. And when he comes home if he doesn't tell us about it he is lying to me. Now most Ekman goes on to say would say only if we ask him son did you get into trouble today in school and he says no then he's lying. But simply the fact that he doesn't tell us some would argue is not a lie. Paul Ekman says yes it is because he knows we want to know and he has an obligation to tell us if he gets into a serious into serious trouble and the fact that he covers it by silence is no justification. Now Sometimes we have to be very careful in the sense of the way we approach the truth and how we couch the truth. Some people, for example, want to talk about being brutally honest. Brutally honest. Why? Why be brutally honest? On the other hand, you have people who want to be lovingly dishonest. So we get the two extremes on the part. I want to really be nice, sweet, loving, kind. You know, I won't tell the truth over here. I'm brutally honest. Let the chips fall where they may, etc. Well, the scriptures give us a nice balance, don't they? Ephesians 4, 15. Speaking the truth in love. There's the balance. There's the approach. Speaking the truth in love. That's the approach we need to be taking. Notice one other distinction that I make here, and that is the difference between the bold, outright lie and the use of guile. And scripture makes that distinction. Two different Greek words are used for them, one for lying and one for guile. Guile is a form of subtlety. This is what occurs a lot of times. You don't want to be in the office, so you step outside the office. The new secretary says, I'm sorry, he's not in the office right now. Well, we all know what's going on there. That's guile. It's the student who comes and says, Oh, you know, Dr. Jones, can I turn my paper in late? You know, my printer broke and it just, I just, my printer wouldn't work at all. And that's true. The only other part of that is the paper wasn't ready either. So it didn't really matter that the printer broke, you know, still wouldn't have gotten the paper. But what they said was true, but it wasn't an accurate representation of truth. There was deception involved. And of course, the scriptures tell us that both the bold outright lie, the use of guile, both of those are wrong. And I love what the Lord said when he saw Nathaniel coming to him. He said, behold, an Israelite in whom is no guile. Those people who knew how to manipulate, who were very shrewd dealers and were told those who put the Lord to death wanted to do it with subtlety. But the Lord looks at Nathanael and says, what you see is what you get. He is up front, he is open, he is outspoken for what he is. There is no guile, no manipulation there. And so I would ask in conclusion, If communication says it all, what are you communicating? The world doesn't need just more communication. It needs a communication of truth with truth. Let's close in a word of prayer. Our Father, we thank Thee for this time that we've been able to have together here, and we've just touched on a few principles of communication. Help us as we interact with others every day to be sensitive to what we're doing, to be concerned about the accuracy and the truthfulness of our statements, and most of all, help us to be concerned with communicating the truth of thy word. Dismiss us now with thy love and blessing, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. You've been listening to The Chapel Hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Our speaker was Dr. DeWitt Jones, Chairman of the Division of Speech Communication at BJU. For a cassette copy of today's program, send a check for $5.13 to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614. Be sure to mention the name of the speaker and today's date. The Chapel Hour has been sponsored by Bob Jones University.