But Does It Edify?

“Edifying: instructive or informative in a way that improves the mind or character.”

“But does it edify?” He let his voice rise with each syllable as he pronounced it. Then he looked at the audience, waiting while it sunk in. Pausing and then bringing down the hammer.

That was the hook from a sermon I heard from a professor who held a Doctorate of Divinity and was the dean of a university seminary. I mention this only to boost the credibility of this story, and the credibility of the speaker.

If you have degrees in Theatre and Speech as I do, attending a religious college as I did, you can be assured of four things:

• You will be listening to a lot of speeches and monologues
• You will be delivering a lot of speeches and monologues
• You will be listening to a lot of sermons
• You will be analyzing every word, every gesture, every intonation

Most of those sermons were not in church or chapel but in speech classes where we broke down the likes of Jesse Jackson and Dr. King.

I learned a lot from these, and I am not talking about spiritual lessons, though there were some really good life lessons.

Have you ever heard a brilliant TED Talk? Heard someone bring down the house at a conference Keynote? Undoubtedly these were awesome speakers. They honed their speech, worked weeks, months, even years. The best ones had three or four speeches in their kit that they would refresh as needed.

Three or four speeches. THAT’S CUTE.

Here’s the thing about preachers. They do a new speech every week of the year. It has to be smooth. It has to be engaging. It has to inspire some action. These are professionals and the best ones are masters not only of vocals and story telling, but of every movement of every bone in their body. They use changes of pitch, changes of pace, changes of intensity. One minute they can look like they’re so vulnerable they may break down and cry. The next minute they’re burning down the sanctuary…with you in it.

They don’t use slides. They don’t stand in a little red circle in order to stay on mic and on camera. Communication is about your body movement as much as it is about what you do with your voice.

I dare you to tune into a fire and brimstone type of preacher on TV some Sunday. You can turn down the sound and still get the gist.

Watch the step back and pause, to catch their breath, to let the point sink in, to let you squirm. Then they’re back on you, up in your face, pointing so you know that it’s you they’re talking about. They may walk all the way across, to the other side of the stage, shaking their heads, wondering how they’re gonna get through to you. Exasperated that you haven’t opened your heart and your mind.

All the while, almost imperceptibly, they are raising the intensity. By the time they’re done, you’re wondering what happened to this sweet gentle person who’s been replaced by a roaring minotaur.

You may not buy what they’re selling, but I guarantee you’re going to make a decision: even if its to just get up and leave, or switch off the TV. You will make a decision. I rarely made the decision the preacher wanted, even when I was being paid to be there, which I often was.

But this time, this one, he got me.

“But does it edify?!”

And the underlying theme? If saying it, doesn’t edify, then there is no need to be saying it. It’s like your mother saying “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” Only it was being said a lot louder, with existential undertones.

This was long before social media and the internet. What would he have thought of the comments sections…where people go after each other knowing they’ll never have to be face to face. Bullies and cowards dominate the discourse, and drag everything down with them. We have lost the gentle art of knowing when something is too hurtful to be worth saying. We have the lost the obligation to stand behind our words face to face.

Think about what you say…and think about what your online connections say. If it helps, visualize a hell for leather preacher sitting on your shoulder, not whispering, but SHOUTING in your ear. “But does it edify.”

And remember. God invented the block button for a reason.

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