Herein is Love / A Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Love in Its Bearing on Personality, Parenthood, Teaching, and All Other Human Relationships.

by Reuel L. Howe

The Purpose of Communication

The question now needs to be raised: What is the purpose of communication? There is a tendency on our part to regard consensus and assent as the goals of communication. The attempt to get people to sign on the dotted line, as it were, makes our communications aggressive and imperialistic. The hearer is not respected as an autonomous, deciding person, and this may cause him to decide against the message because of the alienating way in which it is being presented. When the gospel is preached without respect for the autonomy and integrity of the individual, the effect is alienating. The same results occur when parents act imperialistically in relation to the educational opportunities in the home.

The goal of communication is not to secure assent and agreement, but is, rather, to help the individual make a decision and translate it into action. We have to face the possibility that we may not like his decision, but that it may be the decision he must105 make now. For the moment, the child may say “No” to some admonition or instruction that his parent is giving him, which may seem like a breakdown and failure of communication. On the other hand, if it is the child’s own decision and if the parent can respect it, while at the same time protecting the child from its unfortunate consequences, it may be a step in the process by which the child will eventually say “Yes.” Reflection will reveal how often we have arrived at an affirmative response by the route of a negative one. The negative response was then seen as part of the process by which we moved toward accepting a truth.

Preparation for church membership of both young and old needs to employ this concept of communication. The instruction of many church members has been so ambiguous that they are not clear about what they have decided for or against. After all, we cannot say “Yes” to anything without also saying “No” to other things. People who are prepared for church membership should understand and be able to state the reason for the faith they affirm, and know what alternatives they rejected.

They need help also in discovering what their affirmations and denials mean for their way of life. Only then will they be able to make strong and enabling commitments. One reason for the uncertain witness of many so-called Christians and church members is that they have been persuaded to be Christians without either having that relationship or its alternatives explained to them. Young people in particular need help in knowing what they are choosing against in order that they may be unambiguously for what they have chosen. In an age when values are confused and people’s need for clear-cut loyalties is great, it is tragic that the church’s communication is confused. Let us try, therefore, to communicate in ways that will help people to speak their own “yeas” and “nays” with clarity and conviction.

The Agent of Communication

This thought brings us naturally to a consideration of the church as the agent of communication. The church, as the fellowship106 of the Holy Spirit, is the instrument that God created to speak and act for Him in each generation. Our human response to His calling us to be His people and servants produced the church as an institution, with its organizational and denominational divisions. As any perceptive person realizes, there is often conflict between the church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and the church as institution. As institution, the church faces the temptation of being more concerned about itself than about God and His purposes for His people. As we saw in Mr. Churchill’s remarks, in Chapter I, the church can become so preoccupied with itself that it loses its sense of responsibility for its mission to the world. We saw also that the relationship between the church and the world is intended to be close, for the world is the sphere of God’s action, and the church is the means of His action. The church, therefore, must be found at work in the world, and must feel within itself the tension between the saving purposes of God and the self-centered purposes of man. This is what might be called creative tension.

The maintaining of this creative tension requires that the church as institution be open constantly to the reforming vitality of the Holy Spirit, and church people should be open-minded, adaptable, and ready to live for God experimentally. They must be prepared to face the crises of life as they occur individually and socially with courage and a desire to lead the way for their fellow men. Instead of this, we find that church people have the reputation of being ultra-conservative, reactionary, and lovers of the status quo. The children of light, as it were, are being dragged along by the children of darkness, and are being compelled by them to face up to responsibilities which they ought to have assumed in the name of God years before anyone else. Of course, the record of the church is not altogether negative. In many places the leadership and the membership of the church have courageously pioneered the way in times of crisis and change. This experimental approach to life and crisis ought to be more characteristic of the church than it is. Where it does not exist, it107 is safe to assume that the membership is serving itself rather than the Spirit of God.

The church that is preoccupied with itself can no more express love for others than can a self-centered individual. Church members who are primarily concerned about the maintenance of a church and its educational unit on a particular corner in a certain town create a diseased organization. It suffers from a condition which, in an individual, would be called hypochondria. It is necessary, of course, for an individual to give some attention to his diet, cleanliness, and health in order that he may live his life and do his work. Likewise, the church needs to give some attention to its maintenance, for it needs to be nourished in its gathered life in order that it may do its work in its dispersed life.

The decisive role of the church is not in the church’s church, but in the world: ministering to people at the beginning of and during their married lives, accompanying them in and through their marital failures, and helping them to learn from their experiences so that if they marry again they may do so with more understanding and resourcefulness; guiding them in the raising of their children, and helping them to correlate the insights of the social sciences that throw light on the nature and meaning of human development, especially the ultimate or religious meanings of that development; helping them find their place in the world’s work with as much meaning as possible, and nurturing in them a faith and courage that makes it possible for them to face the conflicts, temptations, and sins of modern industrial life; standing by them in all the crises that they encounter in the course of their human existence; encouraging them to advance in company with the most creative minds on the frontier of human exploration and experimentation; and fearlessly traveling with them as they wrestle with the changing value structures of each new generation, and guiding them in the use of their leisure. But most of all, in and through all of these ways, the church’s task is to try to reveal to men that, though their identity in the world may be confused and lost, in their relationship with God they108 are known and loved. The church, as a fellowship of men, should exist not only to proclaim this truth in the abstract, but to live it in the sphere of the personal and social.