Transmit-Receive

I worked for 10 years in the Air Force on avionics ... aircraft electronics--specifically navigation and communication devices. These specialized devices were designed to transmit ... something ... to a receiver that would analyze the transmission and understand what was intended. So, for instance, a carrier like a radio wave might be amplitude-modulated (AM) or frequency-modulated (FM) with information that is sent to a receiver that can detect the carrier wave frequency and then pick out the variations in amplitude or frequency that contain the information and feed it to the user. A radar (short for "RAdio Detection And Ranging") will send out a pulse that bounces off things and comes back at a known speed so it can be received and compared in intensity and time to paint a picture of what it was looking at. That sort of thing. It takes something that is intended to be sent to another place, puts that something into a transmittable format, and sends it. The other place must have the proper equipment to detect and translate that transmission and come to a proper understanding of its content. It is somewhat complicated, you see?

Humans do this constantly. You have an idea that you would like to share with someone else. Let's call them "B." An idea is not able to be sent, so you have to convert it into a transmittable format. We use verbal and nonverbal communication. You prepare that idea in this format and transmit it to B. B receives it, decodes it, and understands exactly what you were thinking ... in theory. As we all know, it doesn't always work that way. I write, for instance, that the parable of the sheep and the goats isn't about taking care of the disenfranchised, but about lives changed that produces action, and someone else reads it and translates it to mean I'm opposed to taking care of the disenfranchised. Not true. A mistranslation. I write about something Trump did or said without being condemning and they don't translate that as a discussion of an idea, but as a defense of Trump ... which I'm not intending. A mistranslation. I ask my wife, "Honey, why is this spoon on the counter?" I'm actually saying, "I'll put it away for you if you simply forgot it; I'm just making sure you want me to." She hears, "You're such a poor housekeeper and I'm tired of picking up after you." A mistranslation. Happens all the time for all of us.

Scripture says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). That is, from the beginning, Jesus was the expression of God. Jesus was the living expression of God. In addition, Scripture is the expression of God. Jesus called God's word "truth" (John 17:17). Hebrews says, "The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb 4:12). Husbands are commanded to love their wives by cleansing them "by the washing of water with the word" (Eph 5:26). Scripture itself is God's self-expression and is fully sufficient (2 Tim 3:16-17). And we ... misinterpret it. We read it and hear it and run it through faulty internal circuits that twist it and pull it back out ... wrong. I read about a church that based itself on sex, of all things, based on 1 John 4:8 ... "God is love." "Well," they reasoned, "if God is love and love is sex, then sex is God and we're going to have ourselves a grand church." (As I recall, it was called "The Church of Light and Love.") So we take in a clearly transmitted signal ... from God ... twist it through our depraved hearts and minds, and spew out up to and including the exact opposite of what was intended. What we have here is failure to communicate. It is a receiver not properly tuned to the Transmitter, and we need to seek remedy for that.