Thoughts on Truth

My younger brother, Edd, recently posted in his blog an article titled “What is Truth” (see here). As he noted when posting it, “Warning: it is long and it gets political”, and he is quite accurate. But there were several thoughts that occurred to me as I read it (and yes, I read the whole thing – multiple times). I’ve been mulling over these thoughts for the past several days and would like to share them here. This posting will also be long and get somewhat political, but not quite to the extent of my brother’s post.

 

How do we Communicate?

My brother spent the first part of his post exploring the concept of absolute truth – with references to works by Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) (see bio). Schaeffer developed the term “true truth” to capture the essence of what he meant. Since Schaeffer was born and got his seminary education not far from where I was living beginning in 1975, I was very familiar with his works and had read many of them myself. But initially I did not grasp well what he was teaching. Nonetheless, when he was giving a lecture at a school not far from us, my wife and I went to hear him in person.

I had grown up knowing the 7% rule – namely that only 7% of what we communicate is in the words we use. (This is based on a study which noted that our communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only (see one explanation here). While there have been other studies since then, the point is that our words constitute only a fraction of what we communicate. In written communication we often use other literary devices to enhance our communication – things like differing fonts or font sizes variation, bolding, underlining, etc.

But Schaeffer’s books did not come across very well. And one of his major works, the film version of How shall we then live?, was just in the process of being developed from the written version which had been published in 1976.

When I heard Schaeffer in person in the late 1970s, it suddenly occurred to me what my problem was. Apparently for many of his books, Schaeffer had presented the material first as a speech. This speech had then been recorded and the print version was developed by transcribing the exact words that he had spoken, but the other literary devices had not been added in, so that only the words remained. Thus, in the publication process, and using the above percents, they had removed over 90% of that which he had communicated and published the verbal only portion of 7%! But now, knowing what Schaeffer sounded like from the hour or so I heard him in person, and understanding how he communicated, I could go back through those books and mentally add back in the nonverbal and vocal constructs as I re-read them. It was a real “ah ha” moment for me.

 

Communication in a Cultural Context

One of the items that’s not mentioned in the above 55/38/7 model is the impact of different cultures. My brother and I had different experiences here. He and his wife lived and worked in Haiti for several years at the beginning of their marriage. They also lived and worked in Thailand for the last dozen years of their working life, and were located in different areas of the country for each term of their missionary service. As such they took formal language training as well as lived it every day. Thus, they are both trilingual (which I am not).

I had a very different experience in that I spent the last several years of my work as a Business Analyst who served a number of different countries. So, rather than learn primarily one foreign language, I needed to learn just a handful of words in each of several languages. So, I could say the equivalent of “hello”, “goodbye”, and “thank you” but not much else. But I also learned several other non-verbal aspects of communication – things like the proper method of greeting, which hand to use for eating (and which utensils), the impact of the primary religion on culture and any “no no’s” to avoid.

I’d like to close this section with two examples – one with a poor ending, and one with a good ending.

 

A poor ending – One year, because of all the technology changes happening withing the company, management decided that it would be a good idea to bring all the IT support personnel from around the world to our headquarters where we could instruct all of them at the same time. There were representatives from about a dozen countries. As the business analyst for many of these countries, I was also invited to attend. We would then have a series of the IT experts in each of these new technologies make a presentation and allow those in the room to ask questions to be sure that everyone left with a common understanding.

Since I was not in charge of the agenda and did not even know who would be leading each session, I was not able to give any cultural advice to them in advance. So I simply sat in the back of the room, listened in, and observed the representatives from each country. Since a requirement to work for the company was that everyone communicated in English, the presenters thought that they could just speak in English and everyone would understand. But they did not appreciate that having a common language only addresses the 7% of communication being verbal.

It was a disaster! A measure of proficiency in the US is that the person can speak as fast as they can. But this does not take into account that a listener for whom English is a second language needs time to hear (in English), translate the individual words (which may not easily translate into their primary language), then understand the translated result. Thus, the US-based “experts” spoke much too fast and the non-US-based IT folks were quickly overwhelmed. Sitting in the back of the room I could easily see this as all those non-US-based folks were glancing at each other, shrugging their shoulders (or the equivalent in their culture), and just letting all the new words pass them by. Since many of them also came from cultures where to criticize someone is to insult them, or even to ask a question is inappropriate, if the speaker paused and asked, “any questions?” he/she was met with silence and then just continued rambling on. After seeing this in the first few speakers, I tried to get subsequent speakers to slow down, but that didn’t register. I ended up having to have one-on-one meetings with many of the non-US folks to try and fill in the gaps.

 

A good ending – Sometimes a good interchange does not even involve any exchange of words at all. On one of my visits to Brazil, I was there for several days and my visit turned out to be over the time when they celebrated Christmas. Thus, I was invited to attend the office get-together after work one day. They had rented out a local bar – both the bar in the front room and the back room where the tables were all pushed to one side. Although many in the office spoke English, this was an after-work party and so everyone was using their primary language – Portuguese. I was in the front bar room (drinking a non-alcoholic beverage) and was speaking with probably the best English speaker from the office – the executive secretary of the Managing Director. I don’t remember the content of our interaction at the time, but it was fairly innocuous. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a late comer entering from the street. She was one of the younger ladies from the office.

She was headed for the back room but stopped by each person/couple standing at the bar to exchange greetings. This had been part of my cultural investigation before the trip, so when she reached where I was standing, I turned, and without any words being exchanged, touched my cheek to the cheek that she proffered and “kissed the air”. (FYI, the number of cheek touches and kisses vary by country, with some being one cheek, some doing one on each side, and some even three kisses – left-right-left”.) She then moved along to the next person standing by the bar.

When I turned back to the executive secretary, she was smiling broadly and said to me, “you know our customs!” The whole tone of our conversation then changed. I had not said anything, but I had greeted this girl from the office with a culturally appropriate kiss instead of sticking out my hand for a handshake (the typical US greeting). But as a result, my whole interaction with the executive secretary of the Managing Director was impacted. And since she was the gate-keeper to the Managing Director it also had a positive impact on my access to him as I continued supporting the IT connections in that country. And all from one non-verbal interaction with a lady from the office whose name I didn’t even know.

 

Impact on our Church

Before I get to Political Implications, which my brother covered quite well, I’d like to explore the cultural issues in the context of our church. As a basis, I think it’s appropriate to refer to Acts 1:8 (ESV). The final command of Christ before he departed earth were his instructions to his disciples “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Since our church is not in Jerusalem, a way of categorizing these is “within the church, around the church, and around the world. So, how is the church I attend doing in each of these spheres?

 

Within the church – Most of the churches around us tend to be composed of similar people. There are churches that are all/mostly white, all/mostly black, mostly old, etc. But the same cannot be said of our church. While it has its roots in the German Mennonite community of the early 1700s, it is anything but monolithic. The senior pastor is black, the sermon notes are available in both English and Spanish, as are the placards in the downstairs hall. We host an Arabic-speaking congregation who meet every Sunday afternoon and have periodic joint services with them. Two of their young men are part of our worship team and a few weeks ago the words to a song were on the screen in transliterated Arabic and we all sang the chorus together. There are a number of darker skinned folks in the pews, including a family who sits in front of us which is composed of a white man, his wife from Dominica (they met when he was on a mission’s trip there), and their four black adopted children from a family who were previously in Texas. We are decidedly multi-cultural and that in my mind is a great strength.

 

Around the church – Several years ago we had the opportunity to purchase a large piece of land on the outskirts of town, but we deliberately chose to remain in the restricted-parking area in the center of town, stating that’s where our “Samaria” was located. We operate the food bank for the town and each person who comes through the building every two weeks is accompanied by a volunteer – not only to assist the person in choosing a balanced cart of foods (rather than just loading up on one kind), but to get to know the person and to minister to them. In order to serve inner-city families where all the adults in the house are employed, we operate an after-school program for the students – picking up the students at the school just a few blocks away. Because of our long-standing relationship with this school, we were invited to send volunteers to oversee the students after lunch while their teachers get a well-earned break. The school is more than willing to partner with a church because they know that we care! These are just a few examples of how we have reached out to our community.

 

Around the world – there are many churches in the US who do not have well-developed mission’s programs. Perhaps they are too small, perhaps they are large “mega churches” who are centered around a dynamic pastor who is quite well-paid. When we began attending nearly 50 years ago the church had five missionary families – two in Venezuela, one in Morocco, one in Zaire, and one in India. Three of them were families who grew up in the church, but the other two were from elsewhere and only associated with our church because we had purchased a home right across the street which we made available to a family who was home on their periodic furlough (missionary families back then tended to serve a 4-year term, then spend 1-year back in the US meeting with their supporters, etc.). But because of our relationship with the two families from elsewhere, when they retired as missionaries both of them chose to purchase their retirement home in our community and to serve their retirement years with us. The same was true with our pastors as they retired – rather than retire to elsewhere, they remained with us and became part of our congregation. We were “family” to them.

About 30 years ago we began a missions-focused program for teens. In their first year they could participate in a weekend ministry. In their second year they could participate in a week-long, US-based ministry (perhaps a VBS program at one of the smaller churches in our denomination that did not have the necessary resources), then in their third year they could participate in a 2-week-long missions ministry outside of the US.

So where are we today? We have a total of 7 missionary families, 2 in Germany and one each in Mexico, Jamaica, Czech Republic, Venezuela, and Zambia. All but the one family in Venezuela are members of our church, and that family are an indigenous family serving in the church begun 50+ years ago by one of our missionaries there. The wife of that former missionary now lives here in the US, attends our church, and is the contact person for that church in Venezuela. Several of these missionary families are products of that teen program from 30 years ago.

Those missionaries are very much a part of our church, and we get regular videos from each one that show the tremendous work that they are all doing on our behalf. But that is still not enough. As I am writing this, we have a team of people finishing up a week-long trip to a Muslim country looking at ways that we can have a presence in a country that is generally hostile to Christians.

 

Political Implications

My brother has a lot to say in the political arena which I will not repeat here. But I encourage you to read it (link is up above). He ends with these closing statements:

I believe that there is true truth that can be found in God’s word, the Bible. But most people have abandoned any hope of knowing such truth, and I believe that America is suffering for it. Pray that the President and other elected officials will seek after this true truth that we can find in the Bible.

The individuals who run for various offices in this country, from President and on down to local officials, are not perfect. They all suffer from various types of imperfections, just as I do. When there are elections, I study the issues, I study how the various candidates have done in the past and what they say in their campaigns (and often their past actions are quite different than their current campaign statements), then I vote for the individual who I believe would do best. I do not vote for perfection. One might rightly say that I vote for the “lesser of two evils”. Then, as their term progresses, I will answer various surveys that I would hope might have some measure of influence on them.

It's unfortunate that so many of us live in “echo chambers” where whatever ideas we have are multiplied by the voices around us that reinforce what we say. Those surrounding our politicians, either by their choice or by the choice of the politician, tend to be people who are “yes men” who are part of those echo chambers. So making change is very hard and really seeing things from someone else’s perspective is difficult.

Not voting is simply abdicating and letting the views of others count instead of mine. And so I participate by voting. But my responsibility does not end there, I pray! I pray without ceasing. I pray that whatever the politician is making decisions on will end up being a decision that is God-honoring. It doesn’t matter whether the politician is a Republican or a Democrat. I will pray for whomever is making a decision that he/she will end up honoring God. And it doesn’t matter if they make that decision because they are also a Christian like me, or simply because they see the value in those decisions that happen to be God-aligned.

So if there is any value in this post, I ask that you join me in prayer. Living in PA, that means for me that I pray for a President (who happens to be a Republican), I pray for senators (who happen to be Democrats), I pray for our governor (Democrat), state legislators (Republican), and local officials (Republican). Pray with me! Get yourself aligned with God!

Amputee Support

           Back when my amputation was complete and I was finally mobile again, I heard that the Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVHN) had an amputee support group that met every month. I went there for what I thought was one of their meetings, only to find that no one showed up. It turned out that LVHN and Jefferson Hospital had just announced that they were merging and one of the things they needed to do was synchronize their volunteer support processes. It would be several months before they again started meeting again – earlier this month.

It was a good meeting, and I was able to interact with several other amputees – the oldest being about my age and the youngest being only around 19. Some had arm amputations, some had legs amputated above the knee, others below the knee, and a few with other amputations such as multiple fingers, or, like me, a partial foot. The oldest amputation dated from 1977, and the newest from last year (like myself).

Besides monthly meetings, with some kind of speaker, one of the things that this group provides is signing up to be a hospital volunteer so they can visit those in the hospital who have had a recent amputation. I signed up for this and will be going through an interview process later this week. During the hospital’s merger, this was another activity that got set aside, so there was only one person there who is still qualified to do this.         

There are two principal aspects of dealing with an amputation – the physical adaptation and the related mental adaptation.

 

Physical Adaptation

Most amputations happen suddenly, through things like automobile accidents, or, like myself, who went into the hospital with an infection from a long-term diabetic foot ulcer and found myself 48 hours later in the first of three OR visits, terminating in the removal of half of my right foot. Unlike things like a broken limb where the individual may have a cast for 4-6 weeks, or a joint (like hip or knee replacement) which these days are just an overnight (for a hip replacement) or of a few days (for a knee), an operation involving an amputation is permanent. Recovery may lead to the use of a prosthesis, but even this requires a period of healing and adjustment before the individual is “normal” again.     

This period of healing/adjustment may have several stages. In my case it went from (1) being flat on my back and “NWB” non-weight-bearing, to (2) being able to get up with all the weight on my left leg, then swiveling to sit on a potty chair, to (3) swiveling into a wheel chair, to (4) using a knee scooter to go down the hall, to (5) using crutches for mobility, to (6) using a cane. I was in stage 4 when I was released from the rehab facility, in stage 5 when I was learning how to (cautiously) drive again, and I expect to stay in stage 6 indefinitely. It’s a long process!

While the stages may take an extended period and will differ depending on the type of amputation, the person who has just experienced the event that caused the amputation usually not prepared for it. This is where the amputation support volunteer can add some value. The doctor can relate the things which he/she has done and a therapist can help the individual with the exercises and activities needed to aid the recovery process, but this is only part of the process. Being able to talk to someone who “has gone through it” is helpful. I hope to be able to use my experiences to let the patient see “the light at the end of the tunnel”.

 

Mental Adjustment

The physical adjustment should not be ignored. But neither should the accompanying mental adjustment be ignored. Remember that the individual has lost a limb, even if just a finger. And, unlike something like a hip replacement, the limb loss is permanent. It will not grow back. Thus, the individual needs to adjust to not only all the series of changes during the initial hospital stay, but must be prepared for whatever changes there will be in the rest of their life. Being able to interact with a support person who has gone through what the patient is experiencing and who can still present a positive attitude can be very helpful. I was told just this morning by someone with whom I interact most Sunday mornings that they didn’t even know that I had a foot amputation (the reason why I was sitting by one of the primary entrances to church where I could interact with him and others).

Thus, I believe that I have the proper mental attitude that can help others going through an amputation. I certainly want to try!

 

I’ve submitted my hospital volunteer application. I still have to go through an interview, supply references, get a child abuse clearance, and a TB test. But I am looking forward to being able to interact with other new amputees and pass along my experiences and positive attitude. If all goes well, I’ll post again on this topic in the future.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Time Flies

         It was February 1955. Our little street, which had been a dead-end, was being pushed through. What had been a narrow path through a swampy area just wide enough for one person to walk would soon be a paved road that connected to the street beyond. My world was about to expand.

[Alan in 1^st grade]

 

I was the oldest in our family of what had just expanded from two children to three. I was six-and-a-half and in first grade. My sister had just turned five at the end of the previous year. She was a cute and precocious girl with blond hair. My brother was only two months old. Our family had been living in this house in Wolcott, CT since my father purchased it nearly nine years ago. He was 34-years-old and had been working at Scovill Manufacturing as a draftsman since graduating from high school (except for the two years he spent in the U.S. Navy during WWII). My mother was a beautiful 30-year-old and was focused on raising we children.

My grandparents (most of them) were in their mid-to-late 50’s. The primary exception was my grandmother’s second husband who was 30 years older than she was. He had been born just a few months after the end of the Civil War, making him almost 90. I thought about him growing up at a time before Edison invented the carbon filament light bulb. Even when my other grandparents were born in the 1890s, light bulbs were not common outside of major cities. Automobiles came along toward the end of the 1800s, but even by 1910 there were only 5 vehicles per 1000 people in the US. Commercial aviation was not available until the mid-1930s when my father was a teenager. So the lives that my grandparents and parents lived were totally different than my own has been.

While the road from our house to the city where my father worked had been paved about twenty-years earlier, he saw few cars on the road during the seven miles he drove to work. Telephone service was provided by the cities to the north and south of us, so it was a long-distance phone call to others even in the same town. We had recently gotten a television (black-and-white of course). It only got three stations, and they came from different directions so my father had put a motorized antenna turner so we could turn the antenna on the chimney to get the best reception possible. Shows were all live and after the late-night news there was only a test pattern being broadcast until the following morning.

As noted above, I had recently started school. Our little school serviced the entire northern section of town, but still only had one class per grade. Some of my classmates came from English backgrounds, as did I, and our ancestors had been here in the US for over 300 years. Others came from more recent immigrant families and had ancestors from places like French Canada, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, or Austria. We were a pretty motley crew, but our differing backgrounds really didn’t matter. Having the commonality of being in the same class was more important than our ancestries.

 

Time Moved On

I stayed in that small town until I graduated from high school in 1966. Then I spent five years in Michigan for undergraduate and graduate school. Getting married, my wife and I spent four years back in Connecticut, living in Prospect. Then in 1975 I got a job offer in Eastern PA. We moved here in June of 1975 and have now been here for approaching fifty years.

My biological grandparents passed at ages 68, 71, 75, and 81, so I have lived longer than three of them already and am quickly approaching the age of the last one. My step-grandfather is the exception as he lived until the ripe-old age of 93. My parents were married for nearly 60 years and both passed away at that house in Wolcott.

Now, my children are in their mid-40s and only 20 years away from retirement. My oldest grandson is in college and the youngest is several years older than I was back in 1955.

Interestingly, despite having moved away so long ago, I still remain friends with many of my classmates from that small school. We communicate frequently, despite being scattered around the country – it’s a rare day that I don’t see a message from one of them.

The technological changes that my grandparents and my parents experienced may have seemed extraordinary to them all those years ago. But in my lifetime, I’ve experienced changes just as revolutionary. Just think what things like computers and instant communication have brought to our world. Children the age that I was 70 years ago often have access to smartphones of their own on a regular basis!

 

As my time here on this earth grows shorter and shorter, I can’t imagine what changes my grandchildren will see. The youngest ones may live until the next century (just 75 years away!). And they will experience things that I can’t even imagine over the intervening years. I won’t be around for those changes. But I’m glad that I’ve gotten to experience all that I have!

When one is younger, time moves much more slowly – after all, between the ages of 10 and 11 one gets to experience 10% of their life. But that same year only represents 1.3% of my life at this age, so the years seem to roll by so much more quickly.