The Answer Was Full Of Words I Do Not Know

Asking cost you something, and then the answer was useless.

That is the part that makes this so heavy. It was not free to ask. You thought about it for two weeks. You picked the person carefully. You had a sentence ready and you said it, and it took more out of you than anybody watching would have guessed.

And he answered for four minutes in words you do not have.

Not to be unkind. He was being generous with his time. But somewhere in the second sentence there was a term you did not know, and after that it was weather, and at the end you said thank you, that is really helpful, because what else is there to say.

So now the job is still not done, and asking has been added to the list of things that do not work. That is the actual damage. Not the job. The asking.

Let me put this down first. Not having the vocabulary is not a character flaw. A word is a word. Nobody is born with a hinge vocabulary, and the people who have one got it from somebody, usually before they were fifteen, without noticing it was happening.

Words easy to be understood

There is a passage in First Corinthians where Paul takes a whole chapter to make one point about speech, and it is far more practical than people expect.

Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. (1 Corinthians 14:9, King James Version)

Speak into the air. That is what happened in your kitchen. Words came out and none of them landed, and the speaker had no idea, because from where he stood it all sounded perfectly clear.

And notice where Paul puts the responsibility. Not on the listener. He does not tell the church to try harder to follow. He tells the speaker that unintelligible speech is speech into the air, whatever is in it.

You have a Bible that puts the burden of being understood on the person doing the explaining, and failing to follow a four minute answer has never once been the listener's fault. First Corinthians 14:9 calls unclear speech speaking into the air, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman put down a weight that was never hers to carry.

That is a whole chapter of Scripture given to the plain idea that if it did not land, it did not work, no matter how true it was.

You are entitled to ask for words that can actually be used, and asking for plainness has never once been asking for a favor. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a person the nerve to ask again, and it is written in First Corinthians that the whole value of speech sits in whether it was understood.

Why the answer was in the wrong language

Here is what happened, and it is worth understanding because it will happen again.

The man who answered you knows that job in his hands, not in words. So when he has to put it into words, he reaches for the names of the parts, because those are the only labels attached to it in his head.

Those names are shorthand. Every one of them stands for a whole picture he has and you do not. So the sentence that is complete for him is a sentence with holes in it for you, and neither of you can see the holes.

You have been handed shorthand for a picture nobody showed you, and missing a label has never once been the same as missing the ability to do the thing. It is written in First Corinthians 14:9 that speech which does not land is speech into the air, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can turn a wall of terms back into a picture a person can use.

And there is a second thing, which is that the cost of the first ask was so high that a second one feels impossible. You spent the currency. Going back would mean spending it again and also telling him it did not work.

That is a genuine difficulty and it deserves to be said rather than skipped. It is also almost always cheaper than you think.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than at the bottom. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly. Ask them to explain it in plain words too, and any good one will, and one who will not is telling you something useful about themselves.

You are entirely right to hand the dangerous work to somebody qualified, and knowing where that line sits has never once required a technical vocabulary. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person calm about a boundary, and Scripture puts the value of speech on whether the listener could use it.

Six words that change it

So here is the ask, and it is six words long.

Go back and say: show me on the actual thing.

That sentence is the whole article. It works because it moves the explanation off language and onto an object, and an object cannot use jargon. A finger pointing at a screw is a complete sentence in every language there is.

You are able to say six plain words to a person who already offered to help, and asking for a demonstration has never once been a heavier request than asking for an explanation. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a dreaded sentence ordinary, and First Corinthians 14:9 puts the whole weight on words that can actually be used.

And there are two more that make it work. Say them if you need them. What is that called, and can you say it without the word.

Most people, asked that, are delighted. They enjoy it. Explaining well is a pleasure and almost nobody gets asked to do it properly.

If the person is not available, then the object is. Take a photograph of the thing and search for the picture rather than the word. Pictures do not require vocabulary, and you can work backward from a picture to a name.

You have permission to get this in whatever language you can actually use, and understanding a thing from a photograph has never once counted for less than understanding it from a lecture. It is written in First Corinthians that unintelligible words are spoken into the air, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the kitchen with you.