Blogging in Christ — Issue 15

Decently and in Order

A piece can be true and still be hard to receive, because its truths arrive all at once, out of turn, and in no order the reader can follow. The reader meets a crowd of sentences talking over one another. Nothing in that crowd is false, yet nothing is learned, because learning requires a sequence: one thing heard, then the next.

The rule for such a gathering is given in a single sentence. "Let all things be done decently and in order." (1 Cor 14:40) Decently, and in order. The two words belong together. Decency without order is politeness with no path. Order without decency is a parade ground, impressive and unwelcoming. Together they describe a house where a guest can find the door and hear what is said.

The purpose of the order is stated before the rule, and it decides what order is for. "What is it then, brothers? When you come together, each one of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has another language, or has an interpretation. Let all things be done to build each other up." (1 Cor 14:26) Many gifts are present, and none is dismissed. A psalm has its place, and a teaching has its place, but the measure is whether the hearers were built up. A piece is ordered well when the reader leaves stronger in the truth than when he began, not when the writer has shown everything he knows.

That is why confusion is not a small fault in a piece, to be excused by the worth of its content. "for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints." (1 Cor 14:33) The sentence names the character of God: where He is present, peace marks the speaking. A disordered piece contradicts its own message before the reader has finished it. It announces a God of peace in a form of confusion, and the form teaches louder than the sentence.

The remedy is not fewer truths. It is truths in turn. "If any man speaks in another language, let there be two, or at the most three, and in turn; and let one interpret." (1 Cor 14:27) In turn. The phrase is the whole discipline in two words. One voice, then another, then the interpretation that makes the first intelligible. Each is given its turn, and the turn is what makes it hearable. A writer practices the same discipline when he refuses to say three things at once. He states one claim, lets the text establish it, and only then moves to the next. The reader given one thing at a time can carry it; given five at once, he carries none home.

Therefore the order has a stated end, and it is learning, not admiration. "For you all can prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be exhorted." (1 Cor 14:31) One by one, that all may learn. The sequence is the servant of the learning. If every voice speaks at once, even the learned cannot learn, because learning is successive: a first truth prepares the mind for the second. A well-ordered piece respects that succession. It begins where the reader stands, lays the foundation before the consequence, and keeps the conclusion where the testimony has earned it. To reverse that order is to ask the reader to stand on a roof before the walls are built.

The same chapter measures speech by understanding, not by 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 understood words outweigh ten thousand unintelligible ones, because the five instruct and the ten thousand do not. Five plain sentences, in order, give the reader something he can keep. "So also you, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, seek that you may abound to the building up of the assembly." (1 Cor 14:12) Zeal is not the problem. Zeal misdirected to display is. Zeal directed to building up will choose the shorter sentence and the honest sequence, because building up is the end and display is not.

This is where best practice stops being a list of tricks and becomes hospitality. A truthful title is hospitality, because the reader is not lured into a room that holds something else. A plain opening is hospitality, because he need not guess what he must carry. A paragraph holding one movement is hospitality, because he can follow it to its end before the next begins. A verified quotation is hospitality, because he is not handed a text that will fail him when he checks it. None of this is decoration. Each is a door, a chair, a clear path. The writer who neglects them has received a guest badly.

The pattern is older than any manual of craft. When the book of the law was read to the people, the readers did not merely recite it loudly and leave the meaning to chance. "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) Distinctly, and they gave the sense, so that they understood. Three labors, in order: a distinct reading, a sense given, an understanding reached. Omit the second, and the reading remains sound without sense. The hearers understood because the work was done in its proper sequence.

Luke names the same labor at the head of his own writing, and names its fruit. "it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus;" (Luke 1:3) "that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed." (Luke 1:4) Accuracy from the first, then writing in order, then certainty in the reader. A piece written in order lets the reader see why its claims are certain, because each step follows the one before it and can be checked as it goes.

Nor is order the same as ornament. The Preacher sought something humbler and harder than beauty. "The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words, and that which was written blamelessly, words of truth." (Eccl 12:10) Acceptable words, written blamelessly, words of truth: the three stand together, and none excuses the absence of another. A word acceptable and untrue is flattery; a word true and unacceptable wounds where it need not. "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver." (Prov 25:11) The gold is the word; the silver setting is its fitting place and time. The setting does not make the gold, but it lets the gold be seen and handled.

Let the practice, then, be plain and repeatable. Before writing, name the burden in one sentence. Then lay the steps in the order the reader must walk them, not the order in which they occurred to you. Say one thing per paragraph. Put the title over the piece it actually introduces. Check every quotation, and drop the striking line the text will not support. Read it as a guest would: can he find the door and follow the path? If he cannot, the piece is not finished, however true its sentences are. "Whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31) Writing is among the whatever, and its order is to His glory when a reader can hear clearly what God has said.

Decency and order are therefore not the lesser virtues of the craft, left for the end when the real work is done. They are the form in which the real work reaches another mind at all. A disordered truth is a gift left on the threshold in the rain. A decently ordered truth is carried inside and opened where it can be seen. The herald does not control whether the guest receives it. He controls whether the house is ready for a guest. Let all things be done decently and in order, that all may learn, and that the God of peace, not the confusion of the writer, is what the reader meets in the piece.