II Samuel 10:2 Then said David, I will shew kindness unto Hanun son of Nahash, as his father shewed kindness unto me
Have you ever been unjustly accused of something you did not do? Have people ever misunderstood you? The answer is, “Surely, I have been misunderstood. People have been angry at me and I was innocent.” That is an easy question to ask. The real question would be, “Have you ever unjustly been angry at someone else?” If that were the case, you probably wouldn’t know because the very nature of the case. If you are unjustly angry at someone, it is because you know something that isn’t so or you don’t know something that is so.
In II Samuel 10 you find a comedy of errors. David was on a roll of doing kindness to those who had shown him kindness when he was young. II Samuel 10:2 says, “Then said David, I will shew kindness unto Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father shewed kindness unto me. And David sent to comfort him by the hand of the servants for his father.” This was regarding the king of Ammon, an adjoining kingdom. When he was alive Nahash had done David a kindness. David was trying to repay that kindness to Nahash’s son.
What happened? The Bible says the princes of Ammon basically said to Hanun, “Do you honestly think David is sending messengers to be kind to you? Don’t be naïve. This man is a warrior. He is dangerous. David is trying to spy out the land.” By the way, the people to whom we listen are so important. We can do the right or the wrong, but a lot of times the choice is not that choice but the choice of who we listen to in the first place. Hanun listened to bad advisors and shamed David’s servants by shaving off half of their beards and cutting off their garments in the middle to their buttock and sending them away. This was very shameful.
In short, an entire war came about because of this misunderstanding. Did David send these men in order to disgrace or spy upon the children of Ammon? No! He sent them to give comfort. Yet, disaster happened and in the end thousands of people died because Hanun listened to foolish advisers and did foolish things.
It is amazing how bad things can get when we just don’t talk. That may sound a little naïve and I think it can be. We are naïve if we think everyone thinks the way we think. For instance, not everyone thinks like Americans think. There are countries that are so-called theocracies or communist regimes that do not think the way we do. They do not have the values we do. They don’t fight wars the way we do. We are not perfect, but they have different values.
Having said that, issues escalate when there is poor communication. This is true in kingdoms, families, and day to day life. This is true in churches. So many times you can think you know what is going on when truthfully you do not. Different means of communication accomplish different purposes; email, texting, phone calls, face-to-face. It really is a skill to know when texting is appropriate and when you need to call the person or talk to them face to face. There are some things that ought not be done by phone, text, or email. There may be other things that ought not be done face-to-face. I’m not here to say what those things may be, but I am here to say that we need God’s wisdom and grace to know the right thing, to hear the right thing, and to know what that means.
When it comes to texting, there is no voice inflection. You may misread something. If I tell my wife, “You look nice today,” what does that mean? It depends on what I am emphasizing. If I say, “You look nice today,” it means your sister may not look nice today but you look nice today. If I say, “You look nice today,” I might be responding to her saying she does’’t feel well and I say she looks good. If I say, “You look nice today,” that is a third connotation of that sentence. If I say, “You look nice today,” it might imply that she didn’t look good yesterday but she looks good today. As silly as this may sound, it shows how issues escalate where there is poor communication.
Issues can be resolved more readily when I do the right thing in the right way by talking to the right person at the right time in the right way.