Spin

Politicians are famous for it. Activists' statements are full of it. Little children are naturals at it. We all engage in it to one degree or other. What is this mystery activity? Spin - the deliberate choosing of words, assembling them intentionally, and delivering them carefully to put ourselves and our causes in a positive light. At the first sign of resistance from others, most of us begin to spin the objective facts in a subjective way to reduce that resistance and get people on board with us.

One of the places we learn to perfect our ability to spin facts is in school, especially at those levels of education which require a lot of essay-writing. Most students do it without being aware of it. After a few days of sitting under a given instructor's influence, we can tell the kind of person he or she is. Perhaps he values the citation of outside authorities. Maybe she is a stickler for grammatical precision. Some teachers want to hear what the students think. Others want to hear what they, themselves, think reflected back from the students. There is an inexhaustible variety of possibilities here. However, the best students inevitably scan their teachers for their values, interests and preferences and spin their written work to win a sympathetic response.

We also find spin in everyday conversation. Most people naturally spin their contribution to a conversation in the same direction as the others in the group. Depending on the importance of the topic being discussed, we tend to adjust our approach to match the flow of the interaction. On topics that mean little to us, we are generally agreeable and where we can't agree, we are vague enough to avoid confrontation. If, however, the matter under consideration is of high significance to us, we may embrace the opportunity to block the flow of the conversation. We seek the moment when we can begin to turn the group's thinking in the other direction. We spin things in the opposite direction.

I've met a few people who have been very difficult to pin down. Their ability to accommodate to any position by changing their spin is magnificent and at the same time confusing. Maybe nothing matters enough to them for these folk to have strong views on anything. Maybe the conversation just never touches on anything about which they are passionate. I don't find interactions with these people very satisfying and often a little unnerving. You never know when they're going to quote you as an antagonist in another conversation when things are spinning in a different direction.

Then there are those who seem determined to spin everything in the opposite direction. Personally, I find these souls rather irritating, though they sometimes make me think of things that I hadn't considered before. I suspect, though I can't be sure, that this is more an expression of their personality needs than a seeking after truth. Truth be told, under any circumstances, spin is an issue of either making ourselves or others feel better about us.

To add momentum to the way we spin our conversations, we can add "strong language." Some words, which are on the edge of social acceptablity, can make our declarations sound more emphatic. Other words, which are over the edge of social acceptability, are dangerous because they can become the focus of our communication. At that point, those we were trying to take with us become distracted and may slip out of the flow we were trying to create.

A preacher I once heard, used a socially unacceptable word from the pulpit thinking it would add weight to his communication. He immediately sensed that he had misjudged his audience. He attempted to recover the situation by saying something like "Some of you are more upset by my using a four-letter word in the pulpit than you are about the sins of prejudice and injustice which you practice daily." Was this a slip? Was it a clever, though risky, communication tecnique? It doesn't matter a great deal to me just now. I employ it as an example of the tendency to increase the influence of our ideas by the words we use to express them.

Jesus addressed this issue. In his time, swearing was common and socially acceptable. By "swearing" I mean using expressions like "by heaven," or "by all the gold of the temple," or "by the holy altar," in their attempt to convince people of their sincerity and add weight to their words. By the way, it wasn't the down and outers who were doing all this swearing. It was the pharisees - the religious elite. On more than one occasion, Jesus tackled them about this tendency to amplify the significance of their statements in this way.

When you look at the record of Jesus' words, you have to be impressed with their economy, power and directness. Jesus didn't resort to communications tricks of any kind. He never went along with the flow for the sake of avoiding confrontation. He never bucked the trend for the sake of drawing attention to himself. He certainly never swore by anything sacred or profane. He lived by the same communications principle he gave to His followers: "Simply let your ‘Yes‘ be ‘Yes‘, and your ‘No’, ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." Matthew 5:37

This challenges me to monitor my words. It is so easy, so natural, for me to use words more for social benefit than for communicating the truth. I suspect that this tendency may well fall into the category of speech Jesus had in mind in Matthew 12:36 when he said: "I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken." In light of this I am moved to pray David's prayer: "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer." Ps 19:14

Ron Hughes
© June 2007