When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being read but only what they expect to hear read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson – something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because if you really listen – and maybe you have to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it – there is no telling what you might hear.
Frederick Buechner, “The Magnificent Defeat”
Secrets in the Dark – A Life in Sermons
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That’s a great quote. But you know, I feel like that in regular old conversation!
How many times do I feel like someone is hearing something they are predicting I’m going to say based on their perceptions of me instead of what I’m actually saying. Communication is such a complex thing.
For example, when we read, we do not read every letter on a page but rather our mind is racing ahead making predictions based on the letter combinations it sees, our own linguistic knowledge, and our life experiences. So it often happens that we read something, and we don’t realize we’ve misread it until it doesn’t make sense further along in the text–because it made sense in the moment that we read it.
So this really speaks to that in the spiritual realm, I guess. I have never really spent much time thinking about the role prediction takes in verbal communication, but now I will.
Anyway, I need to hear this sort of thing. There is no one in the world worse at listening to sermons than myself. And I’m a pastor’s daughter. Sigh. I would love to hear and read the Bible with fresh untainted eyes.
Amy, as to your last sentence, I’m working on a post for the Rabbit Room about that very topic. I memorized Second Peter and most of First Peter a couple years back, and one downside of that is that it makes it very difficult to actually read the words on the page, because I know what it says. So I’ve been reading over Second Peter for the last couple weeks in the J.B. Phillips translation, and it helps me to consider some of the passages anew, see them with new eyes.