Words, Words, Words: Some Lessons Learned While Teaching the Bible in an ESL Setting

One straightforward, unadorned idea that makes it across the water is better than ten fancy ideas stranded in a beautiful, lonely island.

That is what I've learned while teaching the Psalms to an audience whose mastery of the English language range from thorough comprehension to none whatsoever. It amazes me, to tell the truth, that some of these ladies keep coming, week after week, when they cannot understand more than a dozen words I say.

So I've tried hard to improve my communication skills. Since the women are taking the trouble to come, it's only right that I should endeavor to help them get something out of each class, even just a morsel to take away each week. First thing I have to do is let go of my love of words. Words are worth nothing if they make no sense to the hearer. I've learned that the "delete" button is my friend--though it pains me each time to strike out a profound, beautifully-expressed thought from the presentation.

From time to time, I get bogged down by words. After all, studying the Bible consists of wrestling with words: words from the text, words from supplementary materials, words from my brain. I'm surrounded by words, and sometimes I cannot think straight for the amount of words I wade in.

Words clarify--they also confuse; they endear--they antagonize. I've learned that to be a good communicator, one sometimes needs to rein in one's fascination with words. It won't do being a word snob. Throwing around big fancy words among non-native speakers is like wearing your Rolex to work among the poor. What will it accomplish besides showing what a stuck-up post-colonial elitist you are--if that much? Most likely, though, you are simply putting up a wall of confusion instead of building a bridge.

However, the challenge to teaching the Bible is that we cannot water down the messages simply because we've stripped away the words we use to say them. I remind myself that these women are intelligent, well-educated adults. This is not first-grade Sunday school. We do not resort to flannel graphs.

There's a big difference between teaching English to non-English speakers and teaching the Bible to the same audience. When you teach English, the language is your objective; when you teach the Bible, the language is your medium. How does one reach an objective, such as a profound idea in the Bible, without an adequate medium?

Our Bible class uses a translation called the New Life Version Bible, which is supposed to be the "world's most readable and understandable version". It cuts down the vocabulary in the Bible to no more than a few hundred. Thus, most big words (and little ones) have been eliminated from the text. Righteousness is gone; in its place is "being right with God." Glory is now "shining-greatness." Mercy becomes "favor." Majesty is simply "greatness." For a word-lover, this reading feels like leveling off Mount Everest into a mesa and telling the casual sightseers, "Look! Mountain." Sure, it's far more accessible now. But are we still looking at the same thing?

While I'm willing to let go of words, I'm not willing to let go of important concepts. I'm determined to convey ideas like "mercy" and "majesty" to my audience--even if I have to draw pictures as if we're playing Pictionary. Each week I spend nearly all my free time refining an hour-long presentation, thinking up ways to clarify without compromising an idea. I wrack my brains trying to solve the idea puzzles with pictures. Communication has become my obsession.

It turns out that the Bible, especially the Psalms, is full of pictures--word pictures, that is. The ancients were masters at communication with metaphors, similes, and stories. I am grateful for that, because these last months, I've gained an inordinate amount of appreciation for pictures and illustrations of all sorts. I've come to appreciate artists and their wordless communication more than I had ever done before. They have become my friends: images, stories, symbols, art.

Make no mistake about it, words are still the fastest, most accurate and efficient way of getting ideas from point A to point B. However that is only true when you are dealing with a speaker and a hearer sharing the same linguistic universe (and sometimes even two people from the same country with the same language do not share the same linguistic universe, as I've come to realize). Yet, we do not give up on communicating simply because the only vehicle we are used to relying on fails us. When it comes to such important ideas as faith, we cannot give up. We overcome that barrier, sometimes surprising ourselves with our ingenuity and intuition--and occasionally blessed with divine inspiration. And we expand our personal horizon a bit in the process. We humble ourselves and become students of communication, like little children. We speak through pictures. We grasp in the dark for words. And we grow and develop muscles we didn't know we have.

I'm grateful for the experience.