WORLD-WIDE CYBER-SERMONS

    World-Wide Cyber-Sermons are short written discourses,
which can easily be translated into all languages
and distributed world-wide by electronic means.

    World-Wide Cyber-Sermons are timeless.
This means that they do not depend on references
to the specific time in which they were created.
One hundred years after they are written,
they should be just as relevant as the first day
these ideas were put together.

    World-Wide Cyber-Sermons are universal.
This means they transcend all human boundaries
of race, place, & culture.
World-Wide Cyber-Sermons address only issues
that all human beings can understand.

    Some examples of timeless and universal themes:

Death

    Every human being will die.
This fact might be one of the major sources
of the spiritual striving and speculations of the human race.
Even tho all human beings have been concerned about death,
no definitive understanding has yet been created.

Suffering

    All human beings suffer.
But some forms of suffering are not universal.
World-Wide Cyber-Sermons will address those forms of suffering
that are found everywhere on the Earth
and in all periods of human history.
No human body is immune to all diseases.
All human bodies grow old and decline towards death.
Almost all human beings are involved
in relationships with other persons,
which often gives rise to many forms of suffering.

Sex

    As diverse as we are among cultures and sub-cultures,
we humans are all sexual beings.
Sexual behavior has created us.
And almost all of us will be involved in sexual relationships
at some times in our lives.

Meaning

    The quest for meaning in life is universal to our species.
And every human culture provides many meanings.
Most of these are faulty or limited in some ways.
So several World-Wide Cyber-Sermons
could address the universal quest for meaning in life
without merely reaffirming some 'meaning'
that has already been tried somewhere on the Earth.

 
What we should AVOID in creating a World-Wide Cyber-Sermon 

    We should avoid all references to our own times and places.
In ordinary sermons, such references serve to anchor
our discourses in the concrete experience of our listeners or readers.
References to well-known characters (real and literary)
will not be understood by everyone in the world.
Such allusions only add confusing elements
for our readers and listeners who live in different cultures
and who will be born 100 years after
we create our World-Wide Cyber-Sermons.

    For example, the political leaders of any particular time and place
will not be relevant to people in other times and places.

    Another example: The sports played in one time and place
will not be understood by other human beings
in different places and times.
Sporting metaphors are common in everyday speech
—and in ordinary sermons.
But they should be omitted from World-Wide Cyber-Sermons.

    The social and political problems of any NOW
will not be the same as the social and political problems
of readers in different places and times.
If we feel moved to address such issues,
we should consider what people using a completely different language
and living in a completely different culture
will make of our thoughts.
As an intellectual exercise,
we can try to think of discourses
from a radically different time than our own
(perhaps more than 100 years old)
and from a radically different culture
(perhaps an Asian culture we have never visited
and whose language we do not know)
which is nevertheless still important to us.


Editors and Translators

    World-Wide Cyber-Sermons should be edited by others
who will watch out for any of the problems mentioned above.
But we will save such editors considerable time and effort
if we remove or transform such references
before submitting our proposed World-Wide Cyber-Sermons.

    Translators will also be able to give feedback
concerning problems created by the original form of our expression.
If we have used words or ideas
that are difficult to translate into another human language,
the translators might ask us to simplify and clarify what we wrote
so that our thoughts easily translate into other languages.
If one translator has problems,
other translators will probably also experience difficulties.
It is unlikely that new human languages will ever emerge,
but if that were ever to happen in the future,
could our present discourses be translated into that new language?


Keeping our sentences short.

    The basic unit of all human thinking and discourse is the sentence.
Readers will read our work one sentence at a time.
If they do not understand the present sentence,
they will read it over again hoping to get the meaning.
And then they can go on to the next sentence.
Translators also will treat our expression one sentence at a time.

    Beautiful writing sometimes does create elaborate sentences.
But in World-Wide Cyber-Sermons, we are striving to communicate
with our readers everywhere and in all future times
rather than impress them with our oratorical powers.
After we have written a sentence as we originally thought it,
if it is more than one line,
can we divide it into two shorter sentences?
This will make it easier on readers who do not use our language
and who do not share much cultural background with us.

    Short sentences also fit better on computer screens.
World-Wide Cyber-Sermons will be shared with the world on computer screens.
Therefore, we should consider readers who have small screens.
This sentence is one line on the screen.


Feedback on this draft is hereby solicited:
Please send any comments to James Park:
e-mail: PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU
 

drafted 2-27-2001; revised 4-1-2001; 4-28-2001; 5-26-2001; 8-4-2001; 2-15-2002, 5-11-2002;
1-19-2008; 1-17-2009; 4-3-2009; 4-3-2010; 12-11-2011; 5-17-2012

Return to the Cyber-Sermon Index Page.

Return to the beginning of
the home page of FUUCI.

Go to the beginning of this website
James Leonard Park—Free Library