I had the experience this week of feeling misunderstood. I always try to communicate clearly but there are inevitably times, for whatever reason, that either I misspeak or the other person hears wrong. It is frustrating. I don’t mind it when people disagree with me for something I actually think, but when it is a misunderstanding, it is frustrating.

Isn’t that the nature of language though? Language is prone to misunderstanding – ask anyone who has ever spoken through an interpreter or used a second language. This leads to an interesting question: I wonder what God thinks/feels when someone misunderstands a portion of Scripture? Obviously there is a reason God choose oral and written language to communicate his divinely inspired revelation. He used real people to write Scripture in real times, in real cultures, in real languages, and with real genres. He obviously knew the inevitable problems of language and potential for it being misunderstood. Or what about Jesus, who was often misunderstood by people who listened to him with their own agenda?

These are interesting questions and ones that I don’t necessarily expect to find the answers to, but the search is interesting nonetheless.