Context Demanded

If a person tells you they love their dog, you might say, “Awww, how adorable.” However, if they tell you they love their wife, also, are you to suppose they love their wife the same way they love their dog? I hope not! In the case of this example, we conclude that the concept of love has a variety of meanings, or shades (since the root meaning of the word in both cases expresses a certain affection for someone or something else). Within a single word, a very powerful word at that, there’s a lot of gray area that only context can resolve sufficiently.

How about if a person says to you, “Oh, I just love it when I drive all the way to the ice cream parlor and they are out of the only flavor I like,” as they roll their eyes and drag out the word “love.” In America, this is a universal way of expressing the exact opposite of love (depending on the person’s affection for ice cream, it might even express a certain hatred). Same word, except this time, it’s much more than just a shade off from its alternate meaning. Such is the power of context.

We live in a world where modernization gives consumers a competitive edge in a global society. What I mean to say is that many of our brightest minds and their creative energies are being employed to produce essentials (e.g. food, transportation, communication) faster, in greater quantities, and with increased efficiency. One might argue this is being done out of necessity due to population explosion. Regardless of the impetus, we’re being forced to exist in a world that is becoming increasingly void of context. Hyper-efficient processes tend to supplant humans with machines, reducing the number of human-to-human relationships while increasing human-to-machine ones. We lose context as a result. Let me summarize:

We live in a world that is starving us of precious context, the one thing we need to truly receive what the author of an emotion intended. Love is a perfect example.

Love demands context. In the absence of context, the receiver is left with little more than speculation and predilection. If there’s a good relationship between giver and receiver, then the receiver will probably assume the best, even though they may actually be wrong. Same goes for when the relationship is rocky - the person may assume a lesser degree was intended, even though the giver may have desired to earnestly express much more.

What happens when we accelerate away from our ability to express ourselves effectively? The communication channel becomes pinched, less conducive to conveying the whole truth. What happens when the only way we can consistently tell our sons and daughters that we love them is through an instant messaging app? We hope the artificial means of expressing our emotions (e.g., an emoticon) will suffice as truth; but, we know it never can.

Context is light. Light is truth:

Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.
The Bible clearly tells us that the fruit of light is found in the truth. We might visualize the effective communication of truth as our ability to shed light on a situation, to shine into darkness, and to deliver a person from ignorance to knowledge. The best way for this to happen, typically, is for one person to be  physically standing in front of the other while speaking. Distance and obstacles retard the intended expression, something even the most advanced communications technologies can only partially make up for. For example, if I want to express my love for you, I want to shed as much light on the emotion as possible to ensure you understand it. If something is standing in the way of that, the light is diminished. Blocking the fruit of light, namely the truth, damages context, which in turn perverts the original intention of the expression.

In the absence of context, we are relegated to whatever smidgen of truth we can squeeze through the narrowed orifice between us.

This reality has profound implications, especially in the spiritual life, where our knowledge of the Holy One is everything. Anything or anyone that occludes the Light is an enemy of God (in that instance, at least). Our goal is to learn the Word of God, in context. What good is saying we know the love of God if it has been perverted by ignorance? Said differently, what good is anything received unto our person in the absence of light and truth? For example, if someone says, “Jesus loves you,” but you’ve never read or heard Holy Scripture in support of that truth, aren’t you relegated to someone else’s experience? What if they merely write that in a text and you never see the light of Christ in them, in their own countenance? Furthermore, do we come to know love through someone else’s experiences? May it never be! That’s like standing in the shadows, seeing light around a corner, and concluding we know what it’s like to have the sun shine on our face.

For love to be understood, it must be experienced in context. It’s never enough to whisper it through a narrow orifice and expect the full, transformational light of it to shine through the darkness in this world. The same goes for any fruit of light, of truth. We might consider the following as an extension of this thought:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
The Trinity is comprised of three Persons. We, too, are persons. When we read our Bibles, we read about the adventures, the downfalls, and the interplay between persons. God has created us in His own image in order to relate to us, as persons. Other creatures don’t have this privilege. We are truly blessed, and yet, my fear is that the kingdom of darkness, by using advances in technology, has separated us from the very thing that gives our lives context, each other.

Love in Christ,

Ed Collins