It’s not true in every case, but for many people it is.  Let’s say Person A has an issue with Person B.  Perhaps Person A runs through how he might address Person B beforehand, or perhaps he is talking it through with his wife first.  When Person B isn’t present, Person A tends to be much stronger in tone.  But once they are face to face, Person A will typically be more winsome, more loving, more caring for the feelings of Person B.  (There are exceptions, but let’s not get into psychologically profiling people who struggle interpersonally!)

There’s something in this that is analogous to preaching, I think.  Let’s suppose you are preaching a biblical passage that contains an instruction from Jesus to his disciples.  As preachers we have a tendency to turn any biblical text into an assault on the congregation.  It could be encouraging, comforting, tender, sensitive, or gentle, but in the hands of an unthinking preacher, it will easily come across as harsh exhortation.  Why does that happen?

I think there are various reasons for this phenomena including a misunderstanding of God, or of how people function, or are motivated, or what Christianity is, or often, just a lack of awareness of how we come across.  But I wonder if there is also something in the difference between abstraction and in-person communication that I raised in the first paragraph?

We can easily take the words in a text and pull them out of their historical and interpersonal setting, turning them into a more harsh and abrasive instruction than was the case originally.  Pulling an exhortative statement from its context and preaching it as bare instruction will usually feel more like the command that must be obeyed (drill instructor) than an instruction set in the context of interpersonal communication.

Did the disciples feel Jesus was barking out orders when he spoke to them of trusting in God, or of loving one another, or how they should pray, etc.?  I suspect not.  Somehow in person there would have been a more winsome force involved, the engagement of lives as the setting in which His instruction would have intrigued, motivated, drawn out, stirred, and moved them.

What to do?  My suggestion is to be wary of excising the instruction from its narrative setting in order to preach it as instruction today.  Better to help listeners imagine being there, being in the sandals of the disciples, feeling what they felt, stirring what stirred in them.  Essentially it is about honouring the narrative force of the text rather than over-processing it into bite sized directions for today.  Don’t treat every text as a mere collection of principles to be plucked out and fired at our listeners.  Instead help the listeners to encounter the people in the text and to be stirred by that, very different, experience.