The Core

Everybody wants to know what the core of successful interpersonal communication. Last night my students presented a seminar on this subject and came back to such terms as emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and empathy. All of these are important traits. Even Peter Drucker, the management guru, says that one must manage himself (or herself) before being able to manage employees. It is easy to limit good interpersonal communication to a list of techniques, but most experts recognize that it depends on a core of understanding of one's values, strengths, weaknesses, limitations, and goals.

The writer of Proverbs 4:23 figured it out long ago. "Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it come the issues of life." But in good Biblical fashion, this verse agrees with the gurus but turns their advice on its head. Yes, everything, including our speech, proceeds from the heart, which to the OT folks was not an emotional center but the thought and emotional center (not making a false division that we Westerners do). But we are to guard that which is the center, to recognize that it is susceptible to attack, especially from within itself; open to deception, the most common of which is self-deception.

Not to spiritualize, but the experts nowadays haven't come up with anything new. Now if we can just learn the centuries-old lesson. Only communication that comes from an ethical center and a real central honesty and reality matters and works.