Family of God: RE: [Church_of_Christ] Re: Questions on Marriage

Greetings Brian,

I see what you mean. My intention was, “Gets what I have been unsuccessfully trying to communicate up to that point”. While some responses are calculated and intentional, I believe that most are not and are genuine thoughts without any forethought of malice.

One of the challenges of this form of dyadic communication is misinterpretation of meanings or assigning meanings and motives where none exist. My observations have revealed that this occurs more often around beliefs or ideas of which participants might feel great passion. Some topics push buttons in people and bring out issues that were long buried and have not been adequately addressed to form closure and move forward. Whenever reactions occur that result in a great deal of angst, anger, or impassioned and unrelated responses, e.g. slippery slope arguments and then the eventual personal attacks, it tends to reveal unresolved issues.

Since I rarely make assumptions about intent, I tend not to read these comments as talking down, or having a less complete understanding since I hold all views as equally valid as my own for the individual who holds them.

Since I don’t relish the idea of being a “language police person,” I would prefer that each participant of the list remind themselves that this form of communication lacks the full spectrum that we are used to in our personal face-to-face communications. It is absent the analog cues (facial expression, body language,) as well as the audio cues (intonation, inflection, etc.) and whenever these assumptions should arise in their thinking while reading each post to remember to seek clarification of meaning.

While you did not specifically ask for clarification, your explanation of your comments provided enough information that revealed my own lack of clarity in the intentions and full meaning of my comment.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention and as a reminder that we all need to guard ourselves and subdue our passions in order to make sure the message we heard or that we think we heard accurately reflects the message that was presented.

Additionally: Please take care to edit your submissions to include only that which you desire to address. You left my full response intact, while correctly lifting the text that you wanted to address.

Shalom,

Shawn

Owner/moderator

Shawn wrote:

It’s nice to see someone who finally gets it!

Brian's Response:

I object to the language you use here, particularly the phrase "gets it." The use of this phrase implies that you have some level of understanding that someone else isnt' getting. The way you use it implies that you have the correct understanding and the person failing to "get it" is somehow less knowledgeable or has a less complete understanding than you do. It is a statement lacking in humility.

To be fair, I have seen a number of people use phrases similar to this. <snipped> It has also become apparent that each person has their particular issues about which they are most passionate and these are the areas that people tend to most often use such language in their posts.<snipped>

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