Howard C. Wilkinson - "What Do We Really Mean?" (January 22, 1961)

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-	We come now to that portion of the service of worship,	0:06
	which we call the sermon,	0:12
	during which I play the role of the speaker,	0:15
	and you play the role of the hearers.	0:21
	Speakers speak words,	0:26
	hearers hear words,	0:30
	just as writers write words	0:33
	and readers read words.	0:36
	Now, speakers and writers	0:41
	are givers of words,	0:46
	and hearers and readers are receivers of words.	0:49
	It often is true	0:56
	that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive,	0:57
	for the simple and sufficient reason	1:02
	that the receiver very often does not know	1:04
	what the giver means by his gift.	1:08
	All of us, whether we are professionally known	1:13
	as preachers or speakers or writers,	1:17
	do in our ordinary conversations,	1:22
	use words in such fashion	1:26
	that after we have completed our sentence,	1:29
	leave the hearer or the reader in a state of confusion,	1:36
	as to exactly what we mean.	1:40
	Now, our hearers or our readers	1:44
	may visualize fairly clearly	1:48
	what the words we use mean individually.	1:50
	But the way in which we use these words	1:55
	does not convey a specifically clear concept	1:59
	to our hearer,	2:04
	of what it was we wanted him to understand	2:06
	when we began to use the words.	2:09
	In other words, they do not always get the message.	2:12
	Something needs to be done about this.	2:19
	The late Peter Marshall,	2:23
	who while he was Chaplain of the United States Senate,	2:25
	once led the senators of our country	2:29
	in the following prayer,	2:31
	"Oh Lord, help us to say what we mean,	2:34
	and to mean what we say, and may it be worth saying."	2:39
	It was a very thoughtful prayer.	2:45
	While I was reading Thomas Hobbes Leviathan,	2:51
	then I came across a couple of sentences	2:54
	that reminded me of this prayer.	2:56
	I pass these sentences along to you for your consideration.	2:59
	Thomas Hobbes said, "The man who would know truth precisely,	3:05
	must remember the importance of the meaning	3:10
	of every word which he uses,	3:16
	and to place every word in its proper position."	3:20
	And then he added, "For if he does not,	3:27
	he will become entwined in words,	3:32
	as birds in lime twig,	3:38
	the more he struggles, the more belimed."	3:43
	Now, what on earth are birds in limed twig? I add.	3:48
	Well, perhaps the prior question would be,	3:54
	what is lime twig?	3:58
	This takes us back to England,	4:01
	to a practice that was popular in that country sometime ago,	4:04
	the practice of catching birds without injuring the bird.	4:09
	The people in England had a very sticky substance,	4:16
	a glutenous compound,	4:19
	which they would spread on the twigs of trees.	4:21
	And the birds would come flying along	4:27
	and would light on the twigs,	4:29
	and their feet would become glued to the twig	4:30
	by means of this bird lime, as they call it.	4:35
	And then when the bird would suddenly discover	4:40
	that his feet were stuck to the twig by this bird lime,	4:43
	he would begin to fly furiously or attempt to do so.	4:48
	And when he did this, his wings, in turn,	4:51
	would become glued to the twigs by the bird lime.	4:54
	So the bird would be in this helpless position	4:59
	until the person who had put the bird lime on the twigs	5:02
	came out and extricated the bird from the twig	5:07
	and put him in the box that he had prepared for the bird.	5:10
	Now, this is the figure of speech	5:16
	that Thomas Hobbes had referenced to in the Leviathan.	5:20
	He said that, by implication,	5:25
	"We are prone to put bird lime on our words."	5:28
	Very often in our speech,	5:35
	we use words which have a sort of glutenous,	5:38
	sticky substance upon them,	5:41
	and our hearers become fastened to our words	5:44
	by means of this glutenous substance that we spread on them.	5:49
	And the hearer tries to get himself free, to think clearly,	5:54
	to get a concept which he can understand,	5:59
	and it makes sense to him,	6:01
	and intellectually he struggles mightily to do this,	6:03
	but the more he struggles, the more belimed he becomes	6:07
	because the concepts, the words, the language we use	6:11
	is not clear.	6:15
	Well, we need, therefore to do	6:20
	what Borden Parker Bowne used to tell his students.	6:24
	We need to sterilize the verbal instruments,	6:28
	which we use to perform conversational operations	6:32
	so that our verbal instruments will be clean,	6:37
	and clear and precise.	6:41
	And that when we speak those who hear us	6:44
	will have a straight idea	6:47
	about what we wanted them to understand.	6:50
	Now we are putting our minds on this thought just now	6:55
	not because the hour has arrived	7:01
	for the entire duke community to go through	7:03
	a weekly exercise in language analysis,	7:05
	nor are we doing it because we have a flare	7:10
	for performing what Sid Harris is fond of calling	7:14
	"Antics with semantics."	7:18
	Rather, we are talking about this just now,	7:22
	because values which have to do	7:24
	with our eternal destiny,	7:28
	values which have to do	7:31
	with our relationship to Almighty God,	7:33
	values which have to do with our ethical relationships	7:37
	the one to the other, hang on this very point.	7:41
	We're discussing something here	7:48
	that has to do with the very integrity	7:50
	of our whole religion.	7:54
	It is as fundamental as that.	7:56
	Out weighs the soul.	8:00
	This is so because the sinful tendencies	8:03
	within us, all of us,	8:07
	have discovered that our language furnishes us	8:10
	with a very excellent tool	8:16
	through which,	8:21
	our sinfulness can be expressed to the maximum.	8:23
	There is not any other medium through which	8:28
	we imagine we can be so successfully sinful	8:32
	as the medium of our language.	8:36
	You see when our sinful tendencies	8:41
	can harness our intelligence and put it to work.	8:44
	Our sinful tendencies can by means of our language	8:49
	express righteousness and deviltry in the same sentence.	8:55
	We can express humility with pride.	9:01
	We can claim credit for our generosity	9:05
	as a protection for our stinginess.	9:10
	There's almost no limit to which	9:13
	sinfulness within human nature	9:16
	can indulge itself	9:19
	the illusion through language	9:22
	that it can both have its cake and eat it too.	9:24
	That in spite of what Jesus said, we can serve two masters,	9:30
	by means of our speech,	9:35
	that is to say spreading a glutenous substance upon it,	9:36
	so that our hearers become entangled in it,	9:39
	by means of this	9:42
	we can be humble and proud at the same time.	9:43
	We can be generous and selfish.	9:46
	We can be repentant and unrepented,	9:48
	we can be loving and lustful.	9:51
	We can have our cake and eat it too.	9:55
	Now I believe that one of the quickest places	9:58
	we can see how this operates	10:01
	is at the point where we describe identical activity	10:04
	that is ours and our neighbors.	10:09
	You and I do the same thing.	10:15
	But when I describe what I am doing, I use different words	10:17
	from the words I use when I describe what you are doing.	10:24
	Let us say, for example,	10:28
	that I read novels and you read novels.	10:29
	You ask me why I read novels and I say to you,	10:34
	"well, to help me relax."	10:36
	But when called upon to explain why you read novels,	10:39
	I say, "This is only an index	10:42
	of your desire to escape reality."	10:44
	Let us say there are two co-eds	10:49
	both of whom call everybody on campus, "Darling."	10:52
	Now, Susie is asked at lunch	10:58
	to explain why it is that she calls everybody darling.	11:00
	And Susie says,	11:05
	"Well, it's just my warm nature coming through,	11:05
	it's simply my affectionate nature, I can't help it."	11:08
	Then the next day when she is in the company	11:12
	of some other girls who wonder why it is	11:15
	that Mary calls everybody on campus, "Darling."	11:18
	Susie explains that it should be perfectly obvious	11:22
	that Mary does this	11:26
	because she cannot remember anybody's name.	11:27
	(audience laughs)	11:31
	Let us suppose that you and I are both discovered	11:35
	in telling an untruth,	11:37
	while I immediately am sure	11:41
	that it should be perfectly obvious	11:43
	that you are a liar	11:48
	because you have been caught in telling an untruth.	11:50
	But if you would privately ask me why I told an untruth,	11:54
	I would let you know with arch tones,	11:58
	that you should appreciate my effort	12:01
	to be helpfully tactful in my speech.	12:04
	Now you see how we use language,	12:10
	how the sinful tendencies within us use gift of language	12:12
	to make different interpretations	12:19
	of the same action or reality.	12:21
	It depends upon who is doing, you or me.	12:25
	Now, since we do this,	12:30
	let's take a look at some of the language we use	12:33
	and see what we really mean by it.	12:37
	At this point,	12:43
	I am entirely interested in you examining your language.	12:45
	I have spent the last three weeks examining mine	12:50
	in preparation for this sermon.	12:53
	And this is not the place	12:55
	for me to tell you what I found out.	12:56
	But let's look first at the language of pride.	13:02
	Let us suppose that tomorrow	13:08
	you are having lunch with a friend of yours	13:12
	who in the course of the conversation	13:14
	casually mentions that two weeks ago	13:18
	while he was having lunch with Jack Kennedy,	13:22
	he noticed that Jack did not sit very straight in his chair.	13:26
	And of course, as you all know,	13:31
	our president Kennedy is notorious	13:33
	for the fact that he surrenders to his chair	13:35
	rather than sits in it,	13:37
	that one moment he sits on the left side of it,	13:38
	the next moment on the right side	13:41
	and then he slouches down and then he leans over.	13:42
	Now, what will this friend of yours really be saying?	13:47
	When he says this? Will he be saying,	13:51
	"Mr. Kennedy is not among those	13:57
	who uniformly sit straight in a chair."	14:00
	No, not at all, what he will really be saying	14:05
	to you is,	14:10
	"I had lunch two weeks ago	14:12
	with the president of the United States.	14:14
	Are you aware are my friend	14:18
	that you are in the presence of one	14:20
	who customarily eats with presidents?"	14:22
	(audience laughs)	14:24
	Our pride uses other language.	14:30
	Let us suppose that tomorrow you are having a conversation	14:33
	after your exams with someone who is discussing	14:37
	special edition postage stamps.	14:40
	And he's telling about the letter he received	14:45
	two days ago that had on it,	14:49
	the special edition stamp about wildlife.	14:51
	This goes on for a while and finally you say,	14:56
	"Well, that reminds me now that you mention it,	15:01
	of the stamp that was on the letter I received last week,	15:05
	inviting me to be the grand auditor	15:10
	at the Grand Lodge meeting	15:13
	of the ancient free and accepted masons in North Carolina.	15:15
	By the way, this stamp was a special edition stamp	15:19
	and it was about a historic center in America."	15:23
	Now, what will you really be saying	15:28
	to this friend of yours by this?	15:29
	Will you be saying,	15:33
	"I received a letter which had a stamp on it,	15:34
	commemorating a historic center in America."	15:38
	Possibly this is what you will be saying.	15:42
	A second possibility that you will be saying is,	15:47
	"Have you noticed that I was invited	15:51
	to be the grand auditor at the Grand and Lodge meeting	15:56
	for the whole state of North Carolina."	16:00
	Perhaps, but it is more likely	16:04
	that you will be saying a third thing,	16:06
	"Honors such as this come to me with such frequency	16:09
	that I can discuss them casually	16:13
	in a conversation about postage stamps."	16:16
	This is probably what I really hope you will understand.	16:21
	This is the message I want you to get.	16:25
	Therefore, it behooves us to examine the language of pride	16:30
	and see in it, the expressions of pride	16:36
	from ourselves and the builtin insults,	16:41
	which we hurl at our listeners through it.	16:45
	The builtin insult comes at the point	16:49
	that we imply by what we say in this connection,	16:52
	that our hearers are so stupid,	16:56
	that they will not see that what we're really trying to do	16:58
	is change the subject from postage stamps to pride.	17:01
	Now then let's turn from this	17:07
	and look at the language of apology.	17:09
	We all apologize for our misdoings don't we?	17:13
	It's the thing to do.	17:18
	You can be commended for apologizing.	17:21
	And so if you are caught doing something	17:26
	that society says is wrong,	17:30
	you say almost invariably, "I am sorry I did it."	17:32
	Now what do you mean when you say that,	17:40
	one possibility is you mean,	17:44
	"Whereas I did not fully see before	17:47
	the extent of the moral wrong in what I did,	17:51
	I now see it and I am ashamed of myself	17:55
	and I beg your pardon	17:59
	and I will go to whatever length are necessary for me	18:01
	to go to in order not to do this injury again."	18:04
	That's one possibility of what you mean.	18:08
	A second possibility is that you mean,	18:12
	"I am powerfully, sorry I got caught,	18:15
	how stupid of me not to cover it up better than that,	18:18
	or at least to get someone else to accept the blame	18:22
	in the future I will see to it	18:26
	that I am not this stupid again,	18:28
	but I can risk you one thing out of this situation,	18:31
	I can get credit for being repentance and so I will say,	18:34
	I'm sorry I did it."	18:38
	That's a possibility.	18:43
	Now let's look at the language of romance for a moment.	18:46
	And here we come to a section of the human language	18:51
	that has more birdlime spread on it	18:55
	than any other segment.	18:58
	(audience laughs)
	The language of romance is covered so heavily	19:03
	with a glutenous substance,	19:08
	that it is virtually impossible to penetrate this substance	19:10
	and get down to the real twig.	19:13
	And birds every day and especially every night	19:17
	are caught in lime twigs.	19:22
	We come here to a very interesting phenomena,	19:26
	which is that when it concerns the language of romance,	19:29
	we use language fully intending	19:33
	and expecting that our hearer will know	19:39
	we do not mean exactly	19:43
	the dictionary definition of the words we use.	19:45
	Let me illustrate, in Durham this week,	19:49
	there has been a distinguished guest of the United States	19:54
	by the name of Mr. Howlsigar,	19:58
	who is an editor from the city of Singapore.	20:00
	By accident I had the pleasant opportunity	20:04
	to spend a little time with him conversation.	20:07
	He's been going around the campus,	20:10
	talking to as many people as he could find time	20:11
	to converse with, and he said in his speech,	20:14
	"In Singapore,	20:18
	we do not expect people to arrive at social engagements	20:21
	at the time we invite them,	20:27
	we know they will understand stand when we invite them	20:30
	to come at seven, that we do not expect them	20:34
	until somewhere between eight and nine.	20:37
	And if you were to show up at seven,	20:41
	the time your host invited you,	20:44
	he would be embarrassed and you would be insulted."	20:47
	And he told of an incident when an American visitor	20:51
	was invited by a lady in Singapore	20:54
	to come around to the house at seven for supper,	20:56
	the American thought he meant seven	21:00
	and showed up at five minutes until seven.	21:02
	And the person who answered the doors said,	21:05
	the lady of the house was taking a shower	21:08
	and the host was at the grocery store buying the groceries	21:11
	that they were going to cook for the supper,	21:14
	which they expected to serve around nine o'clock.	21:15
	And they were shocked that he came at seven.	21:19
	They used language,	21:24
	which they expect you to understand in a different way,	21:26
	from the way in which it is	21:30
	on the clock shown to be.	21:34
	Now, this is the way with the language of romance.	21:37
	A young man says to his date, "May I kiss you?"	21:41
	Her answer almost invariably is, "No."	21:45
	Now what does she mean by no?	21:49
	(audience laughs)
	An endless variety of things.	21:56
	One possibility is she means,	22:00
	"Under no circumstances may you kiss me."	22:02
	But this is unlikely,	22:06
	(audience laughs)
	more likely, she may mean	22:10
	"You are stupid to inquire in the first place."	22:14
	Or "Of course it's perfectly all right for you to kiss me,	22:19
	but I wanted understood that it was your idea and not mine."	22:24
	And then take that word love that is always used	22:31
	sooner or later in a romantic situation.	22:35
	What does it mean?	22:40
	Well, it can mean and has been and made to mean	22:42
	and will be made to mean everything,	22:46
	from undying devotion, from lifelong faithfulness,	22:50
	to mutual attraction, to lust,	22:56
	to a adultery and even rape.	23:03
	All of these things have been described by the word love,	23:06
	what I'm going to suggest in connection	23:12
	with the language of romance is	23:15
	that it is totally impossible	23:17
	for any person who hears the language of romance	23:20
	to know what the giver of the speech means by the gift,	23:25
	unless, and until he or she knows	23:30
	the giver as a person very well.	23:33
	The language of romance	23:38
	has become in these days, glossolalia,	23:39
	as you know, glossolalia was a phenomenon	23:43
	that broke out in the new Testament church.	23:45
	Some member of the church would stand up	23:49
	and begin to speak like a tobacco auctioneer	23:51
	and no one could understand what was being said,	23:53
	no one knew what was being meant or intended,	23:56
	except the persons who knew the individual	23:59
	who was speaking in the unknown tongue,	24:01
	knowing his emotional situation,	24:04
	they could have a pretty good idea of what he meant	24:07
	by this excitement that had produced these unknown sounds.	24:09
	Glossolalia has broken out	24:15
	in some of the Episcopal churches in America,	24:17
	just in the last few years on the west coast	24:19
	and around Chicago.	24:21
	And a number of the leaders of the Episcopalian church	24:23
	are looking into this to see what this is a sign of,	24:26
	but to speak in the unknown tongue	24:32
	according to St. Paul is not nearly so valuable	24:36
	as to say a few words that carry a concise meaning.	24:38
	And so it is with the language of romance,	24:43
	but in conclusion,	24:47
	let us take a look at the language of prayer and of worship.	24:47
	For here is where perhaps supremely	24:53
	our eternal destiny is decided	24:56
	and what we mean by the religious words we use.	24:59
	It is a legitimate thing for an individual	25:05
	to make his business a matter of prayer.	25:07
	And on more than a few occasions, some businessman	25:12
	has sincerely said in prayer to God,	25:16
	"Lord bless my business."	25:18
	Now he could mean at least one of two things, he could mean,	25:22
	"Lord, give me the soundness of judgment,	25:27
	the clarity of insight,	25:31
	the skill, the patience, the wisdom	25:33
	to serve the public well,	25:38
	and to receive my own just reward."	25:42
	A second possibility he could mean is,	25:48
	"Now Lord, you know that in this town,	25:50
	there is not enough business for two filling stations.	25:53
	One could handle all of it,	25:58
	but my competitor is dividing it with me.	26:00
	So would you please put holes in his gas tanks	26:03
	and let his trusted servant quit	26:06
	and finally drive him out of business	26:08
	so that I won't have any competition."	26:10
	And here a businessman has meant that by his prayer,	26:13
	"Lord blessed my business."	26:16
	And then there is the prayer just before an exam,	26:21
	"Lord helped me through this exam."	26:23
	I see by this stunned expression on the student back there,	26:28
	that he thinks I have now quit preaching	26:31
	and gone to meddling.	26:33
	By a prayer, Lord helped me during this exam we could mean,	26:37
	"Oh God, give me the clarity of judgment	26:41
	and of memory, freedom from panic,	26:46
	which would enable me to give a true account	26:50
	of what I have learned in this course upon this exam."	26:53
	It can and has also meant,	27:00
	"Lord by some means or other help me to fool the prof."	27:02
	Our prayers, however sincere can mean various things.	27:08
	Sometimes our prayers are only prideful means	27:14
	that we have of exhibiting our orthodoxy	27:17
	or of calling attention to our theological competence.	27:22
	So that like the Pharisees of old,	27:26
	we could stand in a public place	27:28
	and thank God that we are not like other men.	27:29
	And thank God that we are so pious	27:33
	that even God himself	27:38
	must concede that we have arrived.	27:40
	So by means of our religious activities,	27:44
	sometimes we mean to say, not so much,	27:46
	"We are interested in doing the will of God	27:50
	and in converting other people to Christ."	27:53
	As we mean to say, "Just please notice	27:56
	that by now I have earned my seat in heaven.	28:00
	I'm a decent sort of person, unlike these indecent people."	28:04
	And by means of this completely avoid an encounter with God.	28:09
	Paul Tillich said in his sermon on the Flight from God	28:16
	that there is not anything that offers us so good,	28:19
	a protection against a basic encounter with God	28:23
	as worship and religious activity,	28:29
	for when we are doing these,	28:33
	we are able most to kid ourselves into thinking	28:35
	that all is well between us and God.	28:39
	But if by our worship and our religious activity,	28:44
	we mean to say, I have been greatly blessed by God.	28:47
	He has done great things for me.	28:51
	And I have seen the salvation of myself	28:54
	and of the world in His son, Jesus Christ.	28:56
	And I wish to share this good news	28:59
	with everyone else who has not heard it.	29:01
	Then our religious activity	29:04
	can mean something really wonderful,	29:06
	and our worship can be basically helpful.	29:08
	So applying the title of the sermon to the sermon itself,	29:12
	what do we really mean by this sermon?	29:17
	We mean to say, that our language	29:21
	can be and has been used	29:24
	by the sinful tendencies within each of us,	29:26
	to kid ourselves and others into thinking	29:30
	that we are better than we are.	29:32
	And to make us believe the illusion	29:35
	that we can be something we are not,	29:37
	we can serve two masters and therefore,	29:40
	we should guard against this and purify our language.	29:43
	We should not be taken in by the schemes of others	29:46
	who use language in this same way.	29:49
	And we should really mean by our religious activities,	29:53
	by our worship that we do in our hearts truly love God	29:56
	and seek to serve Him and to bless His son, Jesus Christ,	30:01
	who is our savior and the savior of the world.	30:07
	Oh God, our heavenly father	30:16
	who does know our hearts better than we do	30:18
	deliver us from the illusion that we can fool thee,	30:23
	that we can mislead thy Holy Spirit.	30:28
	Instead, may we be led by thy Spirit	30:31
	into sincerity and honesty and into every good thing	30:35
	through Christ our Lord.	30:40
	And now may the grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ	30:42
	be with you all.	30:46

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "What Do We Really Mean?" (January 22, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4zs2qf3d

Date:

January 22, 1961

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0131
ref5466_dog
uachapelsermaud
duke:628364
dcrau002150
ark:/87924/r4zs2qf3d
099a5da0-9782-4d23-ae0c-543abd469395

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

Educational Use Permitted

Rights Note:

This material is made available for educational and non-commercial use. This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the license indicated here. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For other reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

Howard C. Wilkinson - "What Do We Really Mean?" (January 22, 1961)

Transcript

Item Info

Duke University Archives

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