1 Corinthians 14:9 So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air.(ESV)
Imagine standing in the middle of Paris, surrounded by hundreds of people, shouting at the top of your lungs that the sky is blue.
You’re telling the truth. The sky really is blue. Anyone who bothers to look up can see it for themselves. You’re not lying, exaggerating, or trying to deceive anyone.
There’s just one problem. You’re speaking a language that nobody around you understands.
You could shout louder. You could repeat yourself a thousand times. You could become increasingly frustrated that nobody seems capable of understanding something so painfully obvious.
But no matter how loudly you proclaim the truth, the people around you still don’t understand what you’re saying.
You spoke the truth. But did you communicate it?
There’s a difference, and it’s one we frequently overlook.
The Distance Between Speaking and Understanding
One of the foundational axioms of the Forge is simple: All transmission is distortion.
Every time we communicate a thought, we translate something that exists within our minds into something another person can receive. We choose words, expressions, gestures, and tones that we believe will convey our meaning.
But the person listening doesn’t have access to our thoughts. They have access only to what we’ve communicated. They must reconstruct our meaning using their own experiences, understanding, vocabulary, and assumptions.
Even when two people speak the same language, they may not assign the same meaning to the same words.
This doesn’t mean truth itself changes. It means our ability to communicate and understand that truth is imperfect. And the responsibility that comes with that reality is greater than many of us are willing to acknowledge.
Speaking Into the Air
In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul addresses a problem within the church at Corinth. People were speaking in tongues, but without interpretation, others couldn’t understand what was being said.
Paul wasn’t arguing that the words were necessarily false. He was arguing that words nobody understands can’t accomplish the purpose of instructing and building up the congregation.
He asks a devastatingly simple question: How will anyone know what is said?
It’s a question worth asking ourselves.
How often do we speak without considering whether the person listening has any meaningful way to understand us?
How often do we explain something using words familiar to us but foreign to the person we’re trying to reach?
How often do we become frustrated with someone for failing to understand something we’ve never successfully explained?
We sometimes confuse our familiarity with a subject for someone else’s ability to comprehend it. And when communication fails, it’s remarkably easy to blame the listener.
The Convenience of Being Right
There’s a phrase that gets repeated far too often: I’m responsible for what I say, not what people understand.
There’s a measure of truth in that statement. We can’t control another person’s thoughts. We can’t force someone to understand, and we certainly can’t force them to accept what we’re saying.
But the statement becomes dangerous when we use it to excuse ourselves from the responsibility of communicating effectively.
If I stand in Paris shouting in English to a crowd that speaks only French, I can’t reasonably blame them for failing to understand me. The problem isn’t their unwillingness to listen. The problem is that I haven’t made the truth accessible to them.
And if I know they don’t understand, yet refuse to change how I’m communicating, the failure is no longer merely accidental. It’s a choice.
Being correct doesn’t excuse us from the responsibility of being understood.
That responsibility isn’t unlimited. Some people will misunderstand us despite our best efforts. Others may deliberately twist our words. We can’t prevent every failure of communication.
But we can make an honest effort to recognize the difference between someone rejecting the truth and someone simply not understanding what we’ve said.
The Example of Christ
Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever walked the earth, yet He didn’t approach every audience in precisely the same way.
He spoke to fishermen about fishing. He spoke to farmers about planting and harvesting. He used sheep, coins, bread, vineyards, and family relationships to illustrate truths that extended far beyond those ordinary things.
He brought eternal truths into the language of everyday life. And when His disciples failed to understand, He sometimes explained further, asked questions, or corrected their assumptions.
Matthew 13:51 records Jesus asking His disciples whether they had understood His teaching. That question matters.
Jesus wasn’t merely concerned with whether words had been spoken. Understanding mattered.
Of course, not everyone who heard Jesus understood Him, and not everyone who understood His teaching accepted it. Some of His teachings were deliberately challenging, and He didn’t dilute the truth simply to make it more comfortable.
But He demonstrated something we would do well to remember.
Making truth understandable isn’t the same as making truth agreeable.
We aren’t called to change the truth to accommodate our audience. We’re called to communicate it faithfully.
What Are We Actually Trying to Accomplish?
If our only objective is to say something true, then perhaps our responsibility ends when the words leave our mouths.
But if our objective is to teach, encourage, correct, disciple, or help another person grow, then merely speaking isn’t enough. We must care whether our words accomplish the purpose for which they were spoken.
Paul understood this distinction. His concern in Corinth wasn’t simply that people were speaking. It was whether their words were building up the church.
The same principle applies to us.
A parent can give perfectly accurate instructions that a child doesn’t understand. A pastor can preach sound doctrine using language unfamiliar to the congregation. A Christian can explain the gospel with complete theological accuracy while leaving the person listening more confused than when the conversation began.
The words may be correct. The communication may still have failed. And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is stop talking long enough to ask whether the person in front of us understands.
The Responsibility of Truth
We have a responsibility to speak truth. Scripture leaves little room for compromise on that point.
But we also have a responsibility to consider how we communicate that truth.
We must learn to distinguish between clarity and compromise, between explanation and repetition, and between someone who refuses to hear and someone who simply hasn’t understood.
The goal isn’t to win an argument by proving that our words were technically correct. The goal is to communicate something worth understanding.
Because somewhere, someone may be listening to us more closely than we realize. They may carry our words into conversations we’ll never hear, relationships we’ll never witness, and generations we’ll never meet.
What they carry forward may not be what we intended to give them. And that brings us to the other side of this conversation.
What happens when someone hears every word we say, understands every word individually, and still walks away with a meaning we never intended?
That’s where the responsibility of communication becomes even more complicated. And that’s where we’ll go next.
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