Sunday, December 22, 2019

On the Clarity of Charity

The line in my reading yesterday that jumped out at me actually came from a pretty typical passage where a writer went on about the "clarity of language." For some reason, I didn't read that. What I read made me stop and really think: I read "the charity of language."

This seemed an interesting departure from the lines before it, and it got me paying attention. I went back and reread the line to make sure I was right, and then I saw the word "clarity." But this didn't prevent me from a little musing. I admit I was hooked, and I decided to write my misreading down in my notebook. What of the charity of language? I thought.

As I continued to read, of course, it became clear that the writing in front of me wasn't concerned with either charity or clarity. This is nothing against the writer. It is only to say that he did not really accept that clarity in language or charity were possibilities.

I began to ask myself the following: Is it possible to be charitable with language? How would that sound? What would it look like? In the political "arena" most recently, we've been witness to its opposite. Even saying that we've been subject to a lack of charity would not begin to denote the hatred we've been hearing. The quality that really bothers me recently hasn't been these ongoing expressions of hatred, name calling, and divisiveness that are daily occurrences. Rather, it has had to do with a lack of belief: this lack works from the premise that others around us of different factions do not understand what we do. It is not only that we can't agree on what is right. We can't even begin to disagree. Witnessing the last week of Impeachment hearings, where our two major parties seemed to be speaking from different universes all together, I was reminded of the words of St. Augustine in his work with what he was trying to define as Christian rhetoric.

One aspect of communication that the fourth century C.E. rhetorician turned Christian bishop considered to be charitable had to do with thinking, even when a passage was difficult, that there was a meaningful way to understand it. Meaning existed. Charity meant assuming that the writing you are reading or the speaker you are hearing has the intent of making meaning.

This meant an effort at the more receptive acts of what we today term literacy. I am speaking of reading, yes, and also listening.

I don't see that so much today. We are not charitable in the simplest sense that Augustine seems to mean. The moment I hear one person begin to speak, he or she is immediately interrupted by others wanting to have the last say. This is what we might call power, not charity. What does charity mean when the drive is to be right, to have the last say? The drive to be right has never, in my experience, led to changing minds.

The English word charity is loaded with connotations of alms giving, of giving to those who are unable to return what we give. It is something we do for the poor. Those who are our equals, or those we perceive as our equals, or worse, our betters, we don't think of as being deserving of our charity.

That is not the sense one gets, of course, from reading the New Testament.

Charity has to do with wanting another's benefit, with wanting others to live and do well. There's an entire chapter on it in what Donald Trump would call One Corinthians. But that chapter, like most hit songs, is not something we hear with much clarity these days.

We might say that the charity of language has something of clarity in it. We call things as we see them, which is with or without some accuracy. We also use our language to the benefit of others, not only ourselves. As we wish to be considered, so we consider. Our language is such that others are lifted up, healed, and helped, and perhaps not only in a physical sense. We are not talking about flattery.

We use language so that others might feel they are in a place and among people who might really be listening and hopeful of--and ready for--new possibilities.

Seasons greetings.