I started my journey away from Utah with a cup of hot chocolate from City Cakes and Cafe. My barista, Emily, decided to write me a message to send me on my way. There might be a grammar error on the cup, but the sentiment is what matters in this instance.
Liken the message unto yourself
We all have reasons for not hearing the message: the message isn’t about us, it doesn’t apply to us because we have special circumstances, we have heard the same message over and over, or we are just blind to the message because we have no frame of reference for it.
Not hearing the message is most easily seen in the pews of the church where the Gospel is shouted from the pulpits falling on the deaf ears of the church’s members, and the solution is also given – liken the scriptures unto yourself. However, church isn’t the only place where a message can fall on deaf ears.
The LDS Church has one overarching message about life. It is plastered all over their ads on TV, and it is the overriding message beyond all other that comes from the pulpits every Sunday. Life is about family. It is about your ancestors, it is about your wife or husband, it is about your children and your progeny thereafter, and it is about the brothers and sisters in God that everyone is. A core belief is that families can be together forever, and the LDS Church has a ceremony to make that happen.
The messages about family fall on the deaf ears of the Church’s single members who have no family in the church. They fall on the deaf ears of the single sisters who insist that they are waiting for their Stripling Warrior. They fall on the deaf ears of members who regard their gay brothers and sisters as less worthy of love and more worthy of ridicule. They fall on the deaf ears of those members who do not practice genealogy. They fall on the deaf ears of the Mormons that get divorces every year, that abuse children, that fail to take care of their parents.
Every Christian church comes with a call to tithe. People do not tithe because they are too poor, so it doesn’t apply to them. The money they make isn’t really income because it was made from investments that were already tithed. Ten percent costs too much – surely, Christ was talking about someone else and not me.
If people, who are faithful in going to church regardless of which one it is, can ignore messages that they have an actual connection to, imagine how hard it is to hear a message about bigotry, rape culture, or even something as simple as an experience in a foreign land when the person that the message is going to has no context wherein to receive that message.
Communication isn’t just about the sender, but it is about the encoding, the receiver and the decoding. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that to be better decoders, we need to have help deciphering the message, especially when it comes to an important issue that is affecting a large portion of the population. We also need to be in a position to accept that help and want to receive the message. Until we are ready to receive the message, it will fall on deaf ears.
Not hearing the message is most easily seen in the pews of the church where the Gospel is shouted from the pulpits falling on the deaf ears of the church’s members, and the solution is also given – liken the scriptures unto yourself. However, church isn’t the only place where a message can fall on deaf ears.
The LDS Church has one overarching message about life. It is plastered all over their ads on TV, and it is the overriding message beyond all other that comes from the pulpits every Sunday. Life is about family. It is about your ancestors, it is about your wife or husband, it is about your children and your progeny thereafter, and it is about the brothers and sisters in God that everyone is. A core belief is that families can be together forever, and the LDS Church has a ceremony to make that happen.
The messages about family fall on the deaf ears of the Church’s single members who have no family in the church. They fall on the deaf ears of the single sisters who insist that they are waiting for their Stripling Warrior. They fall on the deaf ears of members who regard their gay brothers and sisters as less worthy of love and more worthy of ridicule. They fall on the deaf ears of those members who do not practice genealogy. They fall on the deaf ears of the Mormons that get divorces every year, that abuse children, that fail to take care of their parents.
Every Christian church comes with a call to tithe. People do not tithe because they are too poor, so it doesn’t apply to them. The money they make isn’t really income because it was made from investments that were already tithed. Ten percent costs too much – surely, Christ was talking about someone else and not me.
If people, who are faithful in going to church regardless of which one it is, can ignore messages that they have an actual connection to, imagine how hard it is to hear a message about bigotry, rape culture, or even something as simple as an experience in a foreign land when the person that the message is going to has no context wherein to receive that message.
Communication isn’t just about the sender, but it is about the encoding, the receiver and the decoding. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that to be better decoders, we need to have help deciphering the message, especially when it comes to an important issue that is affecting a large portion of the population. We also need to be in a position to accept that help and want to receive the message. Until we are ready to receive the message, it will fall on deaf ears.