April 24, 2014
Repetition
Recently I attended a worship service packed with praise songs. Similar
to a needle stuck in a groove of an old vinyl record, the four-time repeats of each
of the choruses struck an irritable chord. Interestingly, something similar
seems to be cropping up in sermons where I’ve heard the word “power” was used
over 60 times, “valuable” over 35 times and “patience” over 25 times. I’m still
trying to understand the need for repetition in the message. Is it lack of
preparation and the need for filler on the part of the speaker? Or, does the speaker
think the audience we won’t “get it” unless it is hammered home? In all of 1st
and 2nd Corinthians Paul used the word “patience” or a derivative, only three
times and as a reader, I get it.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----My mind is not too sticky. When I read a book which I really want to learn, I highlight and underline. New and important terms I highlight, outline in red, and write at the top of the page. All of this is because I have to review over and over and over and over and over and over…well…you know what I mean. There is a particular paragraph of one book I have entirely highlighted, entirely outlined, and labeled in red with that term also written at the top of the page. I guess the paragraph struck me profoundly when I read it, and it yet does.
-----Now you’ll know why I have to use so much repetition. This book is at home, and I can’t remember exactly what term labeled the paragraph. But the term’s essence was about the construction of ignorance and deceit. Basically, the paragraph states that a very knowledgeable speaker can very clearly and logically explain a concept to his audience who may as well have stuck their fingers in their ears while humming “Uuummmm.” It’s not their minds they want addressed; it’s their feelings! So the next guy on the stage spreads them with drippings of honey and molasses and everything yummy while telling them nothing, and they go home sated in either ignorance or deceit, to live it, love it, and spread it.
-----The accurate and the true come through carefully constructed and communicated ideas. They are received through only ardent effort to focus, perceive, understand, and interrelate. Proverbs 2 shows that we must strongly desire understanding and knowledge and cry out for it while maintaining a proper attitude towards God (start with fear.) It doesn’t say to just hear something over and over and over and over and over and over and over and…well, you know what I mean. It is showing that attitude and effort are required to receive the accurate and the true.
-----I am not implying that preachers by redundancy are lie spreaders, or ignorance dispensaries. You must examine their messages to know for sure. What I am saying is that the predominance of minds today receive ideas only through repetition, heuristics, and the power of popularity. “If I like him, I like what he says. And I’ll ‘like him’ on Facebook!” That in itself is an heuristic. And a mind which operates this way is so unguarded that the same word or key phrase repeated over and over and so on will sink into any mental space available no matter how fallacious it might be, e.g. hope and change.
-----There are socio-psychological reasons why we have arrived at this place. Ayan Rand lamented that after mankind, as a mass, rejected religious mysticism and passed through the narrows of hyper-rationality, it was arriving (in her day) at aimless mysticism. There, today, it has arrived. In order to stay in this place of aimless mysticism wherein the most iconic figure spouting the best sounding buzz words the most often will be the leader (and the shearer) of the most people, the processes of wisdom must be squelched. It’s like the striped sticks Jacob laid in front of Laban’s herd. The sticks weren’t any sense or lines of reason, they were just there always. And the herds responded by bearing striped and mottled young.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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