Blogging in Christ — Issue 5

Clarity Is Love of Neighbor

A piece can be true and still fail its neighbor. Its doctrine may be sound, its quotations accurate, its argument clear in the writer's own mind — and the reader still walks away unsure what was said. The writer's work is not finished when he understands his own piece. It is finished when another man can understand it too.

The anchor stands in Jerusalem, at the reading of the law. "They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading." (Neh 8:8) Three movements follow in order: the reading was distinct, the sense was given, and only then the people understood. Understanding follows faithful mediation; it does not replace it. The people were ready for that mediation: "The ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law." (Neh 8:3) Attentive ears still needed distinct reading and sense given. The herald's part is to make the thing he has been given followable, so that attentive ears can hear what is actually there.

Distinctly, first. A distinct reading is one in which each note can be told from the next. In writing, that means a sentence says one thing, and the next sentence says the next thing. It means the claim is kept apart from the illustration of the claim, the question apart from the answer, the quotation apart from the writer's comment on it. Muddy writing blends these together, and the reader must do the writer's work for him: sorting out what is asserted, what is only suggested, what is borrowed, what is the writer's own. Distinctness removes that second labor.

Then, they gave the sense. Giving the sense is not smoothing the text away. They did not replace the book with a summary. They read the book, then opened its joint: what this word means here, why this sentence follows that one, what this command requires of the man who hears it. Sense-giving works through difficulty, not around it. A hard passage stated plainly is still hard, and rightly so. A hard passage stated obscurely is hard twice over — once by its subject, and once by its sentences. The writer's craft is to leave only the first hardness standing.

Paul presses the same joint with a trumpet. "For if the trumpet gave an uncertain sound, who would prepare himself for war? So also you, unless you uttered by the tongue words easy to understand, how would it be known what is spoken? For you would be speaking into the air." (1 Cor 14:8-9) An uncertain trumpet may be loud and skillful, but if the hearer cannot tell the call to assemble from the call to advance, the skill has served nothing. Words that are not easy to understand fail because they are not known, not because they are too deep. A piece whose meaning is known only to its author is speech into the air.

Therefore the measure of a piece is not its volume. "However, in the assembly I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in another language." (1 Cor 14:19) Five words that instruct outweigh ten thousand that do not. The contrast is not short against long. A long piece can be clear, and a short piece can be obscure. The contrast is instruction against display. Ten thousand words that never land on a claim the reader can carry away are less generous than five words that land. Every sentence asks the reader to follow it. A sentence that cannot be followed has taken without giving.

Against this stands the confusion at Babel, as a warning about what obscurity does. "Come, let's go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." (Gen 11:7) There, men could no longer understand one another's speech, and the work stopped. Unclear writing does Babel's work at a desk's scale. Jargon used to impress rather than to name, fog used to hide a claim the writer cannot prove, ornament used to distract from a gap in the argument — each leaves the reader unable to understand the speech before him, and the work of weighing it stops. That is not depth; obscurity that cannot survive plain statement was never depth, only shelter.

The criterion, then, is not the writer's reputation but the hearer's need. "Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear." (Eph 4:29) Speech is weighed by what it builds in the hearer, as the need may be. The need governs the form. A weary reader needs a sentence he can hold; a confused reader, the distinction drawn; a reader ready to act, the command stated as a command. To write for the need is to supply, in each paragraph, what this reader lacks — and no more.

Luke shows the same craft in service of certainty. He wrote "having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed." (Luke 1:3-4) Order is not decoration here. The orderly account exists so that the reader might know certainty. A piece that leaps, doubles back, and leaves its order to be guessed at asks the reader to supply the order himself, and certainty slips with it.

Plain speech, at its root, is speech for the weary. "The Lord Yahweh has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with words him who is weary." (Isa 50:4) The tongue of the taught does not sustain the weary by displaying what it has learned. It sustains him by knowing which word meets his weariness, and saying it plainly enough to be received. The weary reader is the ordinary reader, tired and pressed by other duties; he needs the subject stated so he can receive it as he is.

Christ Himself sets plainness as the direction of His speech. "I have spoken these things to you in figures of speech. But the time is coming when I will no more speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father." (John 16:25) The movement of His teaching runs toward plain telling about the Father. The writer follows that movement when his figures serve the plain telling rather than replacing it. An illustration that clarifies is a servant; one that outshines the claim has become a master.

All of this is gathered in one command: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matt 22:39) The test of a piece is neighbor-love applied to sentences. Write as you would wish to be written to. Would you understand this sentence on a first reading, tired as you often are? Could you repeat back the claim of this paragraph without looking at it again? Can you tell what is asserted, what is questioned, and what is quoted? If the answer is no, the writer has asked his neighbor to do work he would not accept for himself. Love removes the obstacles the writer can remove, leaving the reader before the text itself, not the writer's fog. The practice is unglamorous: put the verb near its subject, let one sentence carry one claim, name the paragraph's subject at its start, and cut the sentence that cannot be spoken in one breath. Each cut is a kindness.

None of this guarantees that the reader will hear. The herald announces, Scripture bears witness, and God gives the increase. A clear piece can still be rejected; clarity is no lever that compels faith. But clarity is the writer's own duty, and obscurity he could have removed is an obstacle he chose to leave standing. One obstacle belongs to the heart, and only God removes it; the other belongs to the writer's sentences, and he can remove it. So write plainly, for the neighbor's sake. Read distinctly. Give the sense. Then leave the piece where it stands, and trust the increase to God. If the neighbor understands what was said, the writer has loved him in the one place most writers forget to love: in the sentence itself.