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Communication is a skill!
Great harm results when it is lacking.

Our heavenly Father might be thought of as the grand communicator. We are all born completely ignorant, but immediately start to learn. We first learn to walk and talk by watching others and with the help of our family. That gift of speech is wonderful. With it, we are able to convey what is inside our mind through the air and into the mind of another. That happens, of course, only if we are good communicators. If we are poor communicators, things get balled up in a hurry. Let us consider a true life example of the ignorant behavior of people who are, or were, poor communicators.

This is a true story and is more about morals than communication, but it does highlight the importance of communication. (The names are not real.) Fred, a department manager in a grocery store, was about 30 years old and married. He must have been unhappy in his marriage, at any rate, he ran around. He had an affair with Ruth, a young woman in her mid twenties. Ruth's husband worked the afternoon shift in a factory and so Fred would visit Ruth in her home after she put her small children to bed.

Fred worked in the grocery with Pete. Pete was younger and he and Fred were friends. They were not close friends, but didn't hide the fact they shared a love of women. Maybe Fred needed to break it off with Ruth, or maybe he was afraid she was going to tell his wife. Maybe he just liked Joe. Since there was no real communication, who knows! At any rate, Fred asked Pete if he would like to "date" Ruth. He gave Pete her phone number and told him to call her. Pete called Ruth one evening saying he had seen her in the store and thought she was pretty and asked for her phone number. They talked and Ruth invited (or allowed) Pete to come to her house. They had sex and it became a regular routine for some years. At one point in the relationship, Ruth told Pete if he ever cheated on his wife, to never tell her the truth. It seemed Ruth was implying that is why she cheated on her husband, because he told her about an affair he had.

Apart from being less than morally upright, these people were terrible communicators. As most of us do, they thought of themselves as upright and honest people, and in some respects they were. [Please do not focus on morals as we consider this relationship, but on the importance of communication. These people were involved in a relationship without anyone knowing why the others were doing what they were doing, or probably caring for that matter. What was Fred hoping to get from the illicit relationship. (There is some obvious carnal pleasure from such behavior. Actually, it is the hope of such pleasures rather than actual pleasure. People behaving badly are rarely and briefly happy. All that becomes a matter of morality, however, and we want to consider the damage caused by a lack of communication.) Might Fred have talked to his wife, and made things better with her through communication, so as to be happy with her. He surely didn't get married with the hope of running around. How did they and so many married couples go so wrong.

What about Ruth? What was she looking for? Was she looking for someone to lift her out of a bad marriage, and take better care of her and her children? Was she just reconciled to living in a bad marriage, and trying to take a little pleasure where she could? Did she think allowing herself to be traded around like that increase her chances for happiness. Was she unable to say no to men who wanted sex with her? Why did she tell Pete about her cheating husband? Did she imagine the younger man would fall in love with her and take care of her and her children?

What did young Pete hope to gain from such an arrangement? As has been said, there is the hope of carnal joy, and maybe that's what he sought. But where could that really lead him, any of them? These people were intimately involved physically, but didn't know each other at all, even those involved. There can never be anything but sadness come from such ignorant relationships. The relationship was ignorant because there was no real communication. This is the purpose and point of this consideration: There can be no hope of real and lasting happy relationships without good communication.

That is where the Bible comes into play. After we learn to walk and talk and care for ourselves, what comes next? Will we start to think about having happy and loving relationships or basic animalistic ones. If you want the hope of a happy and fruitful life, learning what the Bible teaches is imperative. And, it is the perfect tool to assist us in becoming a good communicator.

Our Father needed wanted to communicate hope to us is why we find ourselves in the situation we are born into. (We are all born headed to the grave with only a few years before.) He also wanted to communicate to us how we can benefit ourselves through his provision for life.

Most of us grow up with fairy tales offering hope of being a prince or princes. The reality of the life we are born into soon strips away such fairy tale hopes. If we do not seek God through his Word, we are left in empty relationships like the one Fred and Ruth and Pete were involved in (above). The Bible can give you skills to avoid that, or to deal with if you are already caught there. Often times, people are not caught in such relationships because they are bad. They just don't know what else to do. They are ignorant. The Bible can solve that problem.

They are lonely, or afraid of being alone, or feeling despair and hopelessness, and so, they torpedo their future for the sake of what they imagine will make them happy in the short term. The hope God communicated through Jesus Christ sets you free of all that dark despair! It grants you life...

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