Identity Communication

 Schultze & Badzinski: Chapters 3 – 4

Chapter 3 SINGLE-TASK

James sat in church, struggling to focus on the sermon about Moses reluctantly leading the Israelites from Egyptian bondage to the promised land. James’s problem was that people (or was it one person?) kept calling him on his smartphone, which was on vibrate in his zipped jacket pocket.

James thought about trying to sneak a peek at his phone, but people were sitting all round him. He laughed silently to himself at the thought that he wished his contemporary church had old-fashioned, high-backed pews so at least no one sitting behind him could spot him taking out his phone. He felt a combination of shame for not listening intently to the sermon and frustration for not being able to access his phone without potential embarrassment. He felt trapped in temporary bondage, waiting for the service to end, when it would be acceptable even in the sanctuary to check his alerts.

New technologies offer amazing ways of connecting with people and building friendships. But unless we use them wisely, they can spread our time and energy so thin that we lack the deeper, life-giving relationships that we desperately long for. Communication technologies offer digital avenues to friendship and love. But just around the corner is a kind of technological bondage to messages from more and more people and organizations.

In this chapter we address how technologies can help and hinder interpersonal relationships. The first two sections focus on the myth of multitasking and encourage greater single-tasking in relationships. In the next two sections we suggest the importance of resisting message smothering and go on to consider the myth of perfection in relationships, especially related to the implied promises about the benefits of technological life. The last two sections focus on the importance of rest, first, and then the related significance of humor. In one sense James’s discomfort is tragic; certainly he ought to be able to focus wholeheartedly on his relationship with God. But in another sense his situation, like ours, is comedic. We simply need to take our technologies and ourselves a bit less seriously and enjoy more fully the grace in our relationships with God and each other.

Embracing Single-Tasking

The jury is in. Multitasking is a myth. No one can really do it well. When we think we’re multitasking, we’re actually shuttling back and forth from one activity to another without closely concentrating on any one of them.1 Multitasking is like conversing simultaneously with three people on three different phones. None of the conversations will be as good as if we conducted each one separately. Even though James was not talking with others on his phone during the worship service, the vibrating alerts were distracting him from paying attention to the sermon. He kept thinking about the possible messages on his phone rather than focusing on the message from the pulpit.

The idea of multitasking is more technological than relational. Anyone can listen to music while being active in social media. Technologically it’s possible. It might even be fun. But it won’t necessarily lead to better or deeper friendships.

To get to know a person well, try single-tasking in person without an agenda. Get together at a relatively quiet location, like a peaceful coffee shop or a vacant beach, without social-media interruptions.

As a next step, try setting aside fifteen minutes daily for an entire week to focus on communicating with one person without interruptions, even if it means just being together. If the person isn’t available in person, on the phone, or through video on a given day, spend the time (1) reflecting on that person as a gift, recalling her or his blessings to you, and (2) praying that God will show you how to use the gift of communication to bless this person and your relationship. The last two practices are both forms of prayer that build relationships even when people are unable to be together.

As a final step toward getting to know someone well, plan longer activities that nurture leisurely, spontaneous communication. Some of the best activities include going for walks and hikes, playing games, sharing meals, and taking road trips. These kinds of activities provide excuses to meet and don’t compete with conversation. They are relationally open, conversation-producing forms of multitasking. We might call them “soft” multitasking.

The goal in single-tasking is not to eliminate technology from our lives or even to avoid all multitasking. The goal is to maintain time and energy for listening and for developing relationships, especially friendships.

How we use technology in the midst of our busy lives is critically important. Technology can supplement interpersonal communication. A study by the Entertainment Software Association found that changes in both gaming technologies and the ways that people use these technologies have challenged the stereotype of the lone, male, socially awkward gamer. The average gamer is thirty-one years old, and nearly 50 percent are female. Moreover, video gamers lead more social lives and are more optimistic, more educated, emotionally closer to their families, and even more socially conscious. Finally, gamers are more likely to consider friends important in life and less likely to watch television alone.2

New communication technologies always have a capacity to contribute to relationships, but we have to make wise choices along the way, such as employing video games at least partly to build connections with others and avoiding the potential social isolation that games can lead to. Those who are quick to criticize gamers fail to consider that television is far more socially isolating than gaming because it is far less potentially interactive.

Understanding Multitasking

Given the relational benefits of single-tasking, why are we so prone to multitasking? First, we overly multitask because we wrongly equate mere transmission with communication. We believe the myth that faster and more efficient transmission improves communication. We even associate transmission with technology itself, as if buying the latest digital technology will necessarily improve our communication and build our relationships. We forget that communication is shared understanding—even shared relationship—not mere transmission. Pastoral theologian Douglas Webster says, “The substitution of momentum for meaning and a busy life for a full life robs the soul of its own music.”3

Every new communication technology seems to promise better relationships—hence all the smiling people in smartphone advertisements. Technologies represent human progress. “Modern technologists are successors to pagan magicians,” writes Eugene Peterson, author of The Message. “The means have changed but the spirit is the same: metal machines and psychological methods have replaced magic potions, but the intent is still to work my will on the environment, regardless. God is not in on it, or he is in on it only insofar as he can be used in ways that accommodate the lordly self.”4

Second, we overly multitask in order to reduce our social fears.5 Especially with new relationships, we’re anxious because we don’t know others well. We’d like to lessen that ambiguity, but we hesitate to get too emotionally intimate in case the relationship falls apart and we get hurt. Instead of allowing ourselves to get too obsessed with relational communication, we multitask among relational and nonrelational forms of communication. We surf the web or watch television partly so we don’t have to communicate with anyone too intimately. One of the appeals of online dating and social media in general is that one can work on a number of relationships at once without having to make commitments. In the off-line world, such as on a college campus, this isn’t so easy because dating is much more public and more open to the scrutiny of others.

High-tech multitasking in relationships is complicated, and thus we need to tread carefully when we try to conduct relationships online. Unless we already know social-media friends well, it’s hard to predict how they will interpret our text messages, blogs, posts, chats, and photos.

Third, we overly multitask because it can be a lot of fun. Creating more messages in more media won’t necessarily improve our relationships, but it can deliver plenty of enjoyment, especially if we’re comfortable with high-tech media. Just texting back and forth, responding to others’ online posts, or uploading new photos can be entertaining.

But as we adopt more technologies in our lives, we can easily become extreme multitaskers. Like machines, we end up hectically trying to regulate multiple messages for maximum impact. We’re continually jumping from message to message, like dodging between cars on a busy interstate highway to try to get ahead of the pack. Author and former priest Brennan Manning says, “Our controlled frenzy creates the illusion of a well-ordered existence. We move from crisis to crisis, responding to the urgent and neglecting the essential.” He adds, “We still walk around. We still perform all of the gestures and actions identified as human, but we resemble people carried along on the mechanical sidewalk at an airport. The fire in the belly dies.”6

Ironically, feelings of loneliness have increased among people who have access to plenty of communication technologies. People easily feel disconnected in the crowd of messengers.7 Perhaps high-tech people are not getting together with others in person as often.8 In any case, people feel lonely when their level of emotional intimacy doesn’t meet expectations.9 New communication technologies don’t seem to substitute for the kind of emotional intimacy formed through in-person interaction.

Resisting Message Smothering

Rich and rewarding relationships are formed partly through listening to unpredictable dialogue. Such relationships often require working through seemingly competing and opposing desires, such as togetherness and personal independence.10 Generous, life-affirming relationships are possible only by loosening our grip on each other and giving up some personal freedom. Smothering our friends with messages can even drive them from us. But how much is too much?

College students and parents average twenty-two calls, texts, or emails weekly. Some super-tethered parents even call to wake up their offspring on exam days. Researchers suspect that adult children aren’t learning personal responsibility and that parents aren’t learning to let go.11 Moreover, some college students respond defensively to parental over-tethering by, for example, avoiding coming home, hiding personal belongings, and ignoring parents’ text messages.12 Maybe some college students are overly tethered to Mom.

Couples who text frequently might not be deeply in love. Men who text their partners frequently report lower relational quality than men who report texting their loved ones sparingly. Researchers speculate that as men disconnect from a relationship, they text in order to replace more personal, face-to-face interaction. Women, on the other hand, may text more as their relationship deteriorates in an attempt to resolve the conflict—an online version of the need “to talk things out.”13 In any case, texting is unrelated to couples’ perceptions of love and commitment, whereas phone interactions are.14 Perhaps frequent social-media use does not foster close and satisfying relationships.15

Even when they start online, most healthy relationships take on a multimedia life of their own as people serve each other with mutual delight, affection, and respect. In a balanced relationship, partners are comfortable talking on the phone, texting, and hanging out together. The partners don’t always have to be together in person, but they value that time especially. They give each other plenty of space for relational explorations and discoveries, such as new activities that nurture mutual online or in-person delight. A high-tech and low-tech (or high-touch) balance seems to be most fitting for healthy interpersonal relationships.

Using a controlled experiment, researchers added voice communication to the existing text communication among members of an online gaming guild playing World of Warcraft. As a result, members of the guild tended to like and trust each other more and to avoid negative communication.16 Apparently text messages do have relational limits.

Avoiding Perfectionism

In spite of the promises of the latest technologies, faultless communication is impossible. Our relationships are complicated. We never fully understand ourselves, let alone others. The apostle Paul admits, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”17 We humans are not seamless messaging machines but persons who sometimes expect too much from our technologies and ourselves.

Communicative perfectionism—aiming to be flawless, machine-like communicators, and holding ourselves to such an idealistic relational standard—is unrealistic. The perfectionist “always has to have everything according to his or her design, one who fastidiously strives to never make a mistake.”18 Human perfection is a myth, maybe even an idol. No amount of study, dedication, or skill can turn anyone into an impeccable communicator. If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done, says the writer of Ecclesiastes.19

Perfectionism leads to critical hearts, judgmental attitudes, and destructive communication patterns. When we succumb to such an ideal, we may habitually correct others’ speaking or language. We may criticize others for actions that mirror our own weaknesses; we may try to make ourselves feel better by projecting our own problems on them. For instance, a poor listener might gossip about his friend’s poor listening skills, saying something like, “Boy, he doesn’t get it.” A verbally abusive person might disparage the same trait in friends and relatives.

In fact, perfectionistic communicators often create poor communication. “It can be absolutely agonizing to have to sit through a speech or a set of instructions from a perfectionist,” write two psychologists. “It’s next to impossible to glean the main points of the speech. . . . One perfectionistic salesman’s internal e-mails were never read because they were too lengthy. ‘We see an e-mail from Jim, and we just hit delete,’ one coworker quipped.”20

Perfectionism damages our relationships. We hold ourselves, if not others, to an unrealistic ideal. Then we can get so frustrated that we become anxious, impatient communicators. We hold grudges, struggling to forgive others and ourselves.21 Perfectionists are impossible to please—even themselves.

Especially in romantic relationships, we tend to hold excessive expectations. For instance, we accept the myth of wedded bliss. Realistically speaking, however, no one experiences anything close to relational perfection in life—let alone in marriage. If siblings and coworkers can’t entirely get along, why would spouses be able to experience relational perfection?

The notion of the perfect marriage runs deep in contemporary popular culture, from music to movies and novels. Its origins are not in Scripture but probably in romantic fiction.22 Couples with turbulent courtships commonly assume that communication issues will evaporate once they tie the knot. Instead of addressing their issues before the wedding and working on them during the marriage, they drag old baggage into their new life together and find that communication can become even more difficult. “For whatever reason,” writes Christian author Gary Chapman, “one failure after another is ignored until a long, high, thick wall develops between two people who started out ‘in love.’ Communication grinds to a halt and only resentment remains.”23

In relationships, perfectionism sets us up for repeated disappointments. In seeking to be loved by others for being perfect, we become less and less lovable, failing to meet even our own expectations and rejecting others’ attempts to initiate an intimate relationship with us. We lack mercy on ourselves. We get frustrated and perhaps even angry with others and ourselves. Some emotional difficulties, including compulsive eating disorders, apparently result from wearisome perfectionism.24

Communicative realism—an honest sense of everyone’s limited communicative abilities and related communicative imperfections—is a lot healthier emotionally and spiritually than idealistic perfectionism. As Christian realists, we work hard but not obsessively, recognizing that striving to do our best is not the same as perfectionism.25 We accept responsibility for our communication and the resulting relationships. We know that God wants us to flourish, but we also know that we’re flawed communicators. So we learn to live within our human limits. Author Wendell Berry writes, “We must address ourselves seriously, and not a little fearfully, to the problem of human scale. What is it? How do we stay within it? The reason is simply that we cannot live except within limits, and these limits are of many kinds: spatial, material, moral, and spiritual.”26

Our goal should be to develop our communicative skills realistically in the context of the Spirit’s guidance, God’s grace, and an understanding community. We invite God’s ongoing communion with us as we muddle through everyday relationships. We can call humbly on a combination of skill and faith. Rather than relying merely on our own technological expertise, we can share in both the responsibilities and joys of developing our relationships with God and others. We can let go of our excessive standards for others and ourselves. After all, says Scot McKnight in The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others, the “goal of a disciple of Jesus is relationship, not perfection.”27

Faith in God is a critically important antidote for communicative perfectionism. It helps us in at least three ways.

Faith keeps us from suffering the weight of thinking that we will be judged and found lacking for all of our communicative failures.

Jesus’s death and resurrection cover the gap between our flawless and faulty communication. We don’t need to obsess about communication because Jesus will forgive us for our failures. Of course, we shouldn’t take Jesus’s grace for granted. But neither should we discount the eternal value of Jesus’s love for us. Jesus is Lord of grace, not legalism. He is transforming our hearts and renewing our minds, not holding us to unreachable expectations.

Faith reminds us of our ever-present companion in everyday communication: the Holy Spirit.

Unless we daily acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit in our communication, we can depend too much on our own communicative abilities and not enough on the presence of God. Some people constantly analyze and reanalyze scenarios: What if I said x instead of z? What if I sent an email instead of called? What should I wear to impress my new acquaintance? While these questions are worth asking, they are merely human questions. A deeper one is, “What is the Spirit already doing in my relationships, and how can I communicate in tune with the existing work of the Spirit?”

The Spirit is ready to serve us. For instance, using only one word, define for yourself the type of communication that you need from a specific person (e.g., forgiveness, appreciation, encouragement, joy, and respect—and don’t let this short list limit your reflections). Then ask the Spirit to alert you to an opportunity to humbly express your need to this person. Be vigilant but patient, considering when the other person might be least defensive and most receptive. Then explain what you need, not what’s wrong with the other person. Finally, if the time seems right, ask your friend to express one of her or his one-word needs to you.

Faith focuses not just on our strengths but also on our weaknesses.

God is sometimes manifest in our shortcomings rather than our apparent strengths. By all accounts Moses was a poor speaker, perhaps the last person one would expect God to nominate to address Pharaoh and the Israelites. The apostle Paul boasted about the things that demonstrated his human weaknesses to the churches he served. In 2 Corinthians, he exposes his weaknesses and troubles to other believers, identifying them as “participants with him in the life of the church.”28 God, through the work of the Spirit, is able and willing to make his glory manifest in our inelegant or inarticulate communication.

In other words, the Spirit is our special guide in understanding how to communicate in specific situations. Communication principles and skills can help us, but they are only part of the story. When we walk by faith, we have a more mature sense of how best to serve others with the gift of communication, even if we aren’t highly accomplished communicators. We’re more apt to take the right risks, such as being vulnerable and transparent in appropriate settings. We’re more likely to speak up or remain silent at the right time—what is called kairos in Greek, God’s perfect timing, pregnant with opportunity for shared understanding.29

Communicating in the Spirit, we are especially less likely to be impetuous, such as by texting or speaking instantly without first listening. We will more patiently use language in ways that reflect the fruit of the Spirit in our lives—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.30 As a result, we will love others better and will be more lovable. You might try displaying, in a place where you will regularly see it during the day, a note that simply states one fruit of the Spirit. Each time you see it, remind yourself that the Spirit is with you and that you should humbly walk with the Spirit by embodying that fruit in your communication. From a Christian perspective this builds virtue by helping us focus on the quality of our character rather than the quantity of our messaging.

Resting in Grace

We can labor so hard and long in life that we sour our relationships. The singer Michael Jackson once proclaimed, “I’m a perfectionist; I’ll work until I drop.”31 Sadly, he did. And his interpersonal relationships were tragic.

When our communication is no longer fun it becomes a burdensome chore. It stresses us out. Life becomes work without play, labor without delight. Listening and speaking become hassles rather than joys. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns, “For us the creatureliness and miraculousness of the day has completely disappeared. We have deprived the day of its power. We no longer allow ourselves to be determined by the day. We count and compute it, we do not allow the day to give to us.”32

We’re not created solely to work at communication or anything else. According to the book of Genesis, God rested on the seventh day, after creating the world. He looked at the fruit of his labor and enjoyed it. God himself relaxed. God, who in Scripture spoke the world into existence, ceased speaking in order to delight in his work.

That’s the creational pattern for us too. We labor, but we also break. We work at developing relationships, but we also spend time enjoying relationships. We speak, but we also listen, especially to all of the signs of grace in our lives. Seminary professor Bruce Birch writes, “To take seriously what it means to be called into relationship with a radically free God means that some of our energies ought always to be devoted to scanning the horizon looking for the grace-bringing, wholesome-making activity of God and joining it, rather than thinking, once we get things organized, God will be obligated to join us.”33

From a biblical perspective, interpersonal communication is meant to be pleasure as well as effort. If we don’t relish some communication, our relationships will become more of a painstaking curse than a special blessing. Our communicative effort and delight are meant to be complementary; each builds up the other. We need to be able to simply enjoy relating to people—to “rest” in relationships as well as labor at them.

Couples say that their relationships are much more fulfilling when they have fun together. Happy couples laugh together.34 For them, enjoyment isn’t just an indulgence. It’s essential for the life of their relationships. One researcher even developed a fun-and-friendship survey to measure couples’ pleasure in spending time together, asking couples to indicate the extent to which they agreed with statements like, “We regularly have great conversations where we just talk as good friends” and “My partner really listens to me when I have something important to say.”35 Flourishing together relationally requires fun and friendship.

In the ancient Hebrew and Christian traditions, much of life’s delight comes through festive rest. Believers rest not just to cease work but also to celebrate all of their blessings. This is why Sunday, the Lord’s Day, is also traditionally the day for rest (Sabbath) and worship. We gather on the first day of the week to give thanks to God for his mercy and grace. We celebrate all blessings, especially God’s gift of salvation. We thank God for his work in the world and in our lives. Historically many Jews celebrated by making love on the Sabbath as well.

In worship, we remind ourselves that we can’t save ourselves—and that God has already saved us through Jesus Christ. We let go of all our pretensions, all our efforts to self-create heaven in our relationships. We accept God’s blessings, respond in gratitude, and prepare to return to work on Monday. Rest and worship together begin each week; after worship, we “go in peace to love and serve the Lord”—a phrase used at the conclusion of many Roman Catholic and Protestant services as a charge to the congregation.

One of the great ironies of becoming more faithful communicators is that we have to give up some of the very control that we want to exercise. We have to repeatedly offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, dead to our own wills and alive to Christ. We have to pay attention to what the Spirit is already doing in our relationships rather than focus just on what we want out of our relationships. The more bloated we are with our own agendas, the less room there is in our hearts and minds for the often-surprising work of the Spirit.

THE SERENITY PRAYER

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

the courage to change the things I can;

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Neibuhr

Resting from and giving thanks for our communication revives our souls. Keeping a Sabbath in our lives frees us to experience afresh the delight and wonder of everyday existence. Without rest, we lose our sense of childlike joy. We become messaging machines trying to dictate our futures. Rest helps us to “get the adult maturity to keep our feet on the ground and retain the childlike innocence to make the leap of faith.”36

Laughing at Ourselves

In the ancient story of the Tower of Babel, the mighty Babylonians built a great tower into the heavens to make a name for themselves. Using human-made bricks, they cleverly constructed a kind of stairway to heaven.

Then God “came down” to see what they were doing. Clearly they didn’t quite climb all the way up to the heavenly realms to shake hands with their Creator. Once God sized up their arrogance, he confused their language so they couldn’t continue working together on their monument to themselves. In effect, God apparently protected the Babylonians from their own arrogance by mixing up their communication.

The story is probably meant to be humorous. The Babylonians were conceited fools who thought they could play God. Arrogantly aiming to make a name for themselves, they ended up unable to use language—represented as the gift of “naming”—to collaborate on their folly. God humbled them; he brought them back down to earth, to the humus. Previously they could collaborate fully on their arrogant plans; after God created linguistic confusion, the Babylonians couldn’t even understand each other. They aimed to connect directly with God but ended up jabbering, unable to connect with each other.

We all live with a kind of Babylonian strain in our communication-related DNA. We sometimes think too highly of our abilities, and we reach out to befriend and work with those who share our arrogance about building relationships, organizations, and institutions that will impress others. Then something happens and we’re humbly brought back down to earth. It might be a terrible misunderstanding that we were clueless about and that leads to a falling out among leaders. It might be the sudden arrival of a “Dear John” or “Dear Sally” note indicating that we no longer have a romantic friend, or an unexpectedly bad job-performance review. A wake-up call arrives, and we’re forced to reconsider how well we really communicate. Our name is tarnished—even to ourselves.

Should we get angry? Sad? How should we respond to such signs of weakness? If we were treated fairly and simply failed, we need to regroup. We’ve been dealt some humility, probably merited. The apostle Paul said that he would boast about the things that showed his weakness because God’s grace was sufficient.37

But if we were control freaks bent on using the gift of communication to make a name for ourselves, we’ve got some explaining to do. We’ve been cut down to size. We can see ourselves once again for who we are—namely, God’s creatures rather than God himself. We can laugh at ourselves—at our pretense. What were we thinking? Why did we rely so much on our own abilities and so little on God’s wisdom and grace? We can look in the mirror and see a circus clown who has fumbled and fallen. As renowned priest and author Henri Nouwen puts it, “The clowns remind us with a tear and a smile that we share the same human weakness.”38

One of the best signs of a healthy relationship is the ability to laugh together at ourselves. If we take each other too seriously, we won’t enjoy each other as much. We need to be able to tell humorous stories about our own weaknesses and foibles. Humor not only cuts us down to human size; it also builds us up in mutual grace.

Humor can help emotionally hurting people. “Personal transgressions” are “nontraumatic social interactions that victims nonetheless perceive to be morally wrong and personally hurtful.”39 In other words, someone feels personally wronged and experiences emotional hurt as a result. People with a greater sense of humor seem to cope with and even overcome such transgressions.40 Moreover, a person’s sense of humor might benefit relationship partners as well.41 Humor helps us to not take ourselves too seriously and to give others more space for actions that could otherwise seem like personal transgressions.

“Comedy,” writes spiritual theologian James Houston, “is a good instrument whereby we see the false idols of our world, and knock them down. As finite beings, with infinite desires, we live comical lives, full of incongruities.”42 In laughter we rediscover the freedom from excessive busyness, technological overkill, and personal pretense. We take off masks and live in unity with the Holy Spirit, who reveals the faithful route to flourishing.

Conclusion

High-tech society provides many amazing communication technologies that connect us with family, church, work, politics, news, entertainment, and even dates. Our lives are tapestries of mediated relationships, online and in person.

We have to remind ourselves to let go of our busyness—especially our multitasking—in order to regain a proper sense of who and whose we are. No matter how hard we work at communicating, perfection is impossible. Relationships are far too complicated and dynamic. Moreover, excessive work robs us of the sheer pleasure of relationships. So we periodically rest, like God. And we worship the one true God who is indeed in charge of the universe. We give up our pretense and climb back down to earth with the clowns. We let go, knowing that God will catch us.

Regular worship, restful times, good friends, and a healthy sense of humor will quiet our excessive alerts. James could have laughed at himself for wanting to use his cell phone secretly during worship. What was he thinking? What messages on his phone would have been more important than the sermon? James could have shared his folly with some friends so they could laugh together. Why didn’t he just turn off his phone?

The next chapter considers how our communication forms and deforms our identities. Both the ways we think about ourselves and how we view others are shaped by the ways we communicate and miscommunicate. When we order our desires properly—to love God, neighbor, and self—we are more prone to use the gift of communication to serve others and glorify God.

Chapter 4 KNOW YOURSELF

The TV series The Office expressed it well: coworkers can be jerks. Not just funny jerks. Nasty ones. The Wall Street Journal agreed in its 2009 feature “The Fall of the Workplace Jerk.”1

Variations on office jerks include passive-aggressive communicators who wait until they’re boiling mad before complaining about anything—and then blast away at others; gossipers who are everyone’s acquaintances and no one’s true friend; and obnoxious colleagues who talk too loudly on the phone, invade others’ office spaces, wear inappropriate clothing—too formal, too informal, too revealing, too showy—and order highly aromatic food to eat in the office, only to smirk about their resulting gastrointestinal distress.

As the hit sitcom The Office often demonstrates, each of us has two identities. One is our self-identity—how we see ourselves or what we think we’re like as persons. Each of the characters in The Office saw himself or herself as a particular kind of person. Few, if any, saw themselves as office jerks.

Our social identity is how others see us. The ancient Greek rhetoricians used the term ethos to capture a person’s image or character as perceived by others. Some of the humor in The Office is based on the difference between how characters perceive themselves and how their colleagues see them—the difference between their self-identities and their social identities.

In interpersonal communication, others might perceive us differently than we perceive ourselves. To put it differently, our self-identities can deceive us. For instance, we might be overlooking a bit of jerk inside each of us. Given our nature, we’re not just inept communicators. We’re wrongful, even self-serving communicators. We don’t always use the gift of communication to love others as we should. We’re too self-focused—all of us, without exception.2 To use the biblical metaphor, we have logs in our eyes.3

In this chapter we explore how our self-identities are formed and how we can better conform both our self-identities and our social identities to the biblical standard of persons who love God, neighbor, and self. First, we address two identity-forming tendencies in human nature: avoiding communication (cocooning) and criticizing others.4 Next, we explore the role of human desire in interpersonal communication. Typically our desires shape how and why we communicate. Finally, we advocate for a responsible approach to interpersonal communication as social action (not just personal expression) for which we all will be held accountable. By watching over our identities we can better seek to be more faithful and virtuous as well as skilled communicators.

Cocooning

One identity-forming pattern in human communication is cocooning—willfully avoiding people either because we fear having to relate to them or because we want to make them feel bad. Cocooning takes many forms, but a helpful model is Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. At the serpent’s urging, they ate from the fruit of the tree of life. As Scripture puts it, they both disobeyed God’s only cautionary command, felt ashamed, and subsequently tried to hide from God and each other. Apparently filled with shame, they lost their innocence and clothed themselves. Their solution was to cocoon themselves away from their Creator and each other.

A common form of cocooning is the silent treatment (sometimes called stonewalling), when we stop talking to someone to retaliate for something she or he supposedly did to us. We pretend like that person doesn’t exist. We offer her no respect. We talk with ourselves negatively about the person we’re stonewalling; we chat up a storm in our own mind about how she wronged us. Maybe we even ignore the person on social media, giving her a sort of digital cold shoulder.

The silent treatment is like bullying—a way of ostracizing others. Often the silent person uses the withdrawal of direct, verbal communication to try to get what he or she wants, such as power, recognition, or superiority. Confronting such silent bullies often doesn’t work; instead it leads to verbal conflict.

Another approach is to continue to love the silent person with your own actions and words. This should be genuine, humble love—not forced love to try to make the bully feel wrong. It’s up to the bully to reach out to you; it’s not up to you to repair the relationship on the bully’s terms.

In the case of Adam and Eve, their previous desire for communion with God and each other was apparently overshadowed by their desire to protect their fragile self-identities. Facing God was embarrassing. Facing each other was awkward. The two dealt with their situation by cocooning. It was like they just wanted to stay in bed after sunrise, hiding under the blanket with a pillow over their heads, the phone turned off, and the bedroom door closed.

One way to interpret this biblical account is that human nature is so corrupted that we can’t possibly live in perfectly open, completely honest, guilt-free relationships. Our consciences tell us that we’ve treated others wrongly. We live with interpersonal wounds that need constant care. We cocoon both to protect ourselves from hurt and to hurt others. But in the process we stop communicating about important things, including broken relationships and injustices right before our eyes.

Transparency—openly, honestly, and appropriately sharing what’s on our minds and in our hearts—is the opposite of cocooning. When we live transparently in trusting relationships, we learn much about each other, including some of the deepest desires of our hearts. We can love and serve each other more fully because we accept each other in spite of our weaknesses. Our listening becomes shared, aimed at mutual flourishing, and grounded in genuine social identities.

Criticizing

The second identity-forming tendency in our communication is putting people down. After Adam and Eve disobeyed their Creator, God confronted them. Adam blamed Eve, who first ate the forbidden fruit and passed it along to Adam. Then Eve blamed the serpent. They both criticized others for their own, willful misdeeds. It was a “he-made-me-do-it” or “she-made-me-do-it” scenario.

Criticizing—blaming others for something that we perceive as unacceptable, often to make ourselves feel superior—is a common problem with our communication. There are times when we should confront others about the ways they have wronged us (e.g., to seek an apology5), but much of our criticism is wrongly designed to make us feel better about ourselves by belittling others.

We all know that we’re imperfect. We see firsthand our communicative failures, such as the ways we ignore and hurt others, fail to advocate for those in need, and advance self-serving agendas. When it comes to loving our neighbors as ourselves, we repeatedly miss the mark. We sometimes compensate by trying to build ourselves up through speaking negatively of others—often criticizing others for the very kinds of relationship-sinking communication that we ourselves practice. In short, we selectively look outside ourselves for the causes of our own misdeeds. We care more about saving face than being honest.

Addressing our self-identities partly means not blaming others for our weaknesses. “You made me do it” is one of the greatest lies of all time. Whenever we say it, we falsely tell ourselves that we didn’t have a choice to respond the way we did. We play the victim. We justify our inappropriate communication based on our own feelings. We transfer responsibility to someone else. We always need to ask ourselves if the facts support such a one-sided self-defense.

When we dig deeper into our guilt and embarrassment, we uncover something even more disturbing. We can become jealous when others are more faithful, skillful, or accomplished than we are. We can even harbor ill will in our hearts toward those who are better communicators and perhaps more popular or successful. Truth be told, we sometimes like it when popular people fail. Occasionally we justify our animosity by telling ourselves that admired people are self-righteous and deserve to be taken down a few notches when they experience public embarrassment that tarnishes their social identities.

When negative conflict brews, we’re quick to indict others yet slow to admit our part in the mess. When things go wrong, we prefer to blame others.6 Physically abusive spouses blame their partners for their destructive behaviors.7 Workers blame bosses. Students blame teachers. Friends blame friends. This is human nature.

The main difficulty we face in assessing our critical attitudes toward others is that criticism is not altogether bad. There are aspects of our relationships that are simply wrong. Like all sins, they are “not the way it’s supposed to be.”8 Yet our criticisms of others often point to what’s wrong with us. In fact, we’re hypervigilant with others’ problems that mirror ours.

Checking Our Desires

To discern if we’re practicing destructive cocooning and criticism, we need to check and recheck our motives. What do we desire when we withhold communication from others or when we disparage them? What do we really want? Recognition? Respect? Love? Understanding? Our communication reflects our desires, especially what we seek from others and for ourselves.

The wise writer of Proverbs says that just as water reflects a face, so one’s life reflects the heart’s desires.9 We have the abilities to learn communication skills, master communication theories, and memorize communication-related definitions. But what do we truly long for? Why do we communicate?

Corrupted desires lead us astray. We all know people who love to speak just to impress people. They don’t listen. They seem to be overly enamored with their own rhetorical abilities. Life is all about them. Maybe we are that way too.

Before responding to someone who is short or impatient with you, try asking yourself three questions about your motives: (1) Are you trying to get even or to heal the relationship? (2) Are you trying to put down or build up the other person? (3) What do you desire from the other person and for yourself?

Many office jerks are adept communicators; they know how to get a message across. But their desires are warped. They care more about their own agendas, successes, fun, and fears than about others’ flourishing.

Communication competence is the ability to communicate appropriately and effectively in particular situations. It includes knowledge, skill, and motivation. We’re more competent communicators when we know what to communicate (knowledge) and how to communicate (skill) in particular contexts and when we seek to communicate well (motivation).10 But even such competent communication is not always sufficient. The way the term is typically used, “competence” doesn’t include virtue or character—that is, the kind of person one is as reflected in what she or he truly desires. For instance, one can be a competent but self-serving and even manipulative speaker.

In short, faithful and virtuous communication flows from a desire to love God and neighbor. Communicative skill without righteous desire can dangerously lead us to exploit others. Relationships dissolve over this lack of humble self-awareness. Does our communication tend to invite others to lean on our shoulders for encouragement and support, or does it find fault in them?

Ordering Our Desires

The secret to linking healthy desires to our communication is understanding and then ordering our desires properly.11 It’s the threefold law of love: to love God, neighbor, and self. Used in that order to guide our communication, these love-based desires lead us to recognize our misguided practices, seek the best for others, and pursue personal flourishing along the way. Such proper ordering of desires helps unify our self-identities and social identities.

Here’s how our desires should work together in our communication.

Desire #1—Loving God

We gratefully desire to communicate under God’s authority, according to God’s wishes, to bring honor and glory to God.

Desire #2—Loving Our Neighbors

We desire to communicate on behalf of other people, who are our “neighbors” made in God’s own image and likeness. We are called to serve and advocate for them just as the Holy Spirit advocates for us to the Father. We offer the fruit of our communication skills to advance the interests of others. Under God’s grace, we become living sacrifices, using our talents and skills to demonstrate Jesus’s love to others in all areas of life.

Of course this kind of neighborly communication is not always easy to discern. It takes diligence and experience. Suppose you appear to be the sole witness to an auto accident except for the two parties involved in the crash. You know who caused the accident. Should you continue on your way? Stop and console the victims? Call the police? Wait for the police to arrive so you can offer an objective report of what happened? Assuming no one was badly injured, who is your neighbor in this case? What should you desire? How should you use your gift of communication?

Desire #3—Loving Ourselves

Finally, we desire to communicate on behalf of ourselves. We take into account our own needs and interests—what’s good and right for each of us as followers of Jesus. We don’t give away all of our communicative time and effort to the point of destroying our own life, including our relationships with others. We advocate for ourselves, humbly as well as skillfully, just as we advocate for our neighbors.

In other words, we love ourselves as neighbors too. This might sound selfish. Yet the gift of communication equips us to communicate with ourselves (sometimes called intrapersonal communication12) just as we communicate with God and other neighbors.

LISTEN TO YOURSELF FOR YOURSELF

In order to love ourselves as communicators, we need to ask ourselves tough questions.

How well am I caring for myself with the gift of communication?

Am I so focused on communicating with others that I don’t even know what I think or how I should think?

Have I been attending to my own communication skills?

Am I listening to my own heart?

Am I so busy that I neglect to take care of myself?

The great preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote, “It would be in vain for me to stock my libraries . . . if I neglect the culture of myself; . . . my own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service; my spiritual faculties, and my inner life, are my battle-ax and weapons of war.”

Quote from Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 8–9.

To put it differently, desires 2 and 3—love of neighbor and self—are equally important even though we are called in most circumstances to put our neighbors’ interests ahead of our own. In fact, to acquire the skill to serve our neighbors, we must also attend to our own relational health. This self-neighbor connection is complicated and untidy. We have to be on guard against justifying selfishness, such as getting in someone’s good graces by promising to pray for them when we know that we won’t or rationalizing deceptive résumé language in order to advance our careers—a practice that will also tarnish our self-identities. But we also have to guard against being so completely selfless that we destroy our capacity to use the gift of communication to love God and neighbor.

THE FOUR MOST MARRIAGE-DESTROYING HABITS

Criticism—stating one’s complaints as a defect in one’s partner’s personality (i.e., giving the partner negative trait attributions). Example: “You always talk about yourself. You’re so selfish.”

Contempt—statements that come from a relative position of superiority. Contempt is the greatest predictor of divorce and must be eliminated. Example: “You’re an idiot.”

Defensiveness—self-protection in the form of righteous indignation or innocent victimhood. Defensiveness wards off a perceived attack. Example: “It’s not my fault that we’re always late; it’s your fault.”

Stonewalling—emotional withdrawal from interaction. Example: The listener does not give the speaker the usual nonverbal signals that the listener is “tracking” the speaker.

Psychologist John Gottman calls these destructive communicative practices “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

Adapted from John M. Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert (New York: Three Rivers, 2000), 27–34. This summary is from “Research FAQs,” The Gottman Institute, http://www.gottman.com/research/research-faqs/.

In order to keep a healthy, God-focused balance, we need to be anchored in a Christian community where worship, fellowship, and education form us into healthy lovers of God, neighbor, and self—all at the same time, and in the right order. Faithful communities nurture life-giving interpersonal communication. They help us to act rightly by syncing our self-identities and social identities with the righteous desires and good practices of a faith community.

Communicating Responsibly

Communicating with right desires comes from the heart, but the result of such communication is evident in our actions. In fact, human communication is action (proactive doing) rather than mere behavior (passively responding to stimuli).13 Our communication isn’t a simple stimulus-response mechanism caused by our social environment. No one causes us to say, write, or paint something in particular simply because of what they say, write, or show to us. No one causes us to dress or speak offensively, to gossip, or to stonewall. No one causes us to speak unkindly or to listen impatiently. Bad role models can lead us astray, but we still chart our own ways. Communication is action that is based on our decisions and flows from our desires. It’s meant to be a way of responsibly practicing the three loves by making right choices.

A simplistic behavioral model of human communication doesn’t capture how God made us as inventive, active communicators called to responsibly love God, neighbor, and self. Human communication is amazingly creative and deeply relational. There are over one million words in English alone, addressing hundreds of thousands of life-related topics. When we put our self-identities and our social identities on watch, we admit that we’re responsible creatures who act intentionally upon our desires.

So, at root, interpersonal communication isn’t just about processing messages. It’s about living responsibly in relationships. This is why the word “communication” can be so deceptive. The word is so general and so non–human specific that it doesn’t capture the life-forming and life-destroying nature of human communication within relationships. We don’t just communicate; we don’t just behave. We perform incredibly important and highly moral actions, such as inviting, accepting, promising, forgiving, and committing. Our communicative actions have consequences. High school student Phoebe Prince killed herself after having been “teased incessantly, taunted by text messages and harassed on social networking sites.”14 Words exercise power.

Also, responsible human communication isn’t just about self-expression. If we used the gift of communication only to express ourselves, there wouldn’t be much shared understanding. Our communication would be dismally self-serving—designed merely to advance our ego. We’d just be talking past each other. Communication is more about collectively seeking mutual understanding than individually performing self-expression. As leadership expert John Maxwell puts it, “Good communication and leadership are all about connecting.”15

The fact that we’re called to be responsible communicators is clear in the extent to which we are intentional about it. We often think about what we’re going to say or not say.16 We plan important conversations and presentations, from wedding vows to apologies. We revise them. We rehearse some of them in our minds—like proposing marriage, sharing our faith, or prepping for a job interview. We worry about which words and gestures to use and how to express them. If we aren’t adequately intentional, we know we might speak regrettably. We might come across as being unprepared, incompetent, or even offensive—all three of which suggest irresponsibility.

When our hearts are rightly engaged, we approach all communicative actions responsibly, watching out for God’s will and our neighbor’s interests. We can’t always be prepared for what will happen in conversations, but we can listen carefully and avoid being intentionally self-serving.

Moving Forward Faithfully

For Christians, communicative action is meant to be faithful. We acknowledge our broken and fragmented selves, and move forward, knowing that God has given us power to overcome our hurts and insecurities. We continually remind ourselves that we are created in God’s image. We are his children. His beloved. And his love is not based on what we have done or failed to do. God loves us unconditionally. We don’t have to criticize to feel worthy. Brennan Manning writes, “Self-acceptance becomes possible only through radical trust in Jesus’ acceptance of me as I am.”17

We are not created to defeat ourselves with words of insecurity and inferiority. This is tough for many of us who struggle with a sense of low self-worth, convincing ourselves that we will never be good enough. We aren’t rich enough. Attractive enough. Smart enough. Athletic enough. Such self-deflating talk about ourselves wreaks havoc on relationships. As Manning puts it, how can we possibly “accept love from another human being when we do not love ourselves, much less accept that God could possibly love us?”18

So instead of hiding, we responsibly take risks. We transparently let other people enter into our lives by sharing our lives with them. We talk with special others about matters of the soul. We express our hurts and share our dreams. It requires trust. It takes courage. But we do it, knowing that God can bless our relationships.

Such self-disclosure can be honest and helpful online as well as in person. In-person support groups like Weight Watchers have long been effective ways for people with shared concerns to be transparent with each other. Women with breast cancer who disclose their stressful experiences in online support groups tend to have “greater improvements in health self-efficacy, emotional well-being, and functional well-being, and fewer breast cancer concerns.”19

We confidently do what we must. It may be that we are asked to befriend a lonely person or seek forgiveness from one we have harmed. It may not be easy, but we can’t just sit or mope around, hoping for better relationships. We need to act in tune with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

We live in a fallen world where undeniably bad things are said (sins of commission) and good things are left unsaid (sins of omission). We really have no idea whether a friend will break our confidence or say something that hurts us deeply. We can choose, however, to have faith in the relationship. We can choose to believe the best of our friend and to believe in the unfolding beauty of the relationship. All such faith in others makes sense because of our faith in God. “Imagination is the capacity to see people in light of the hope of the wholeness that God intends for them,” says philosopher Caroline Simon.20

Conclusion

So we approach our communication by regularly keeping watch over our self- and social identities. We don’t assume that only other people are office jerks. We honestly ask ourselves if we are on the right track, growing not just in our communicative skills but also in virtue and faithfulness. Our goal is self-honesty and improvement, not perfection. The three loves—of God, neighbor, and self—provide both the proper desires and the right order for the decisions we make about how to act in communication situations.

A show like The Office bases much of its comedy on the gap between employees’ awkward or foolish social actions and their clueless sense of self-identity. The characters do embody some stereotypes but nonetheless point to real issues in our own communication.

In the next chapter we address the importance of faithfulness in relationships, especially honesty, transparency, and authenticity. Honesty includes both being true (faithful) to one another and being truthful (speaking the truth). It also means avoiding gossip and flattery. In order to flourish in relationships, we need to be forthright persons who represent ourselves honestly as well as skillfully.