Sense appeal

It always puts a smile on my face when I run across a story that exemplifies a topic I’ve been studying. Here’s an example. I’ve been making my way through the book Preaching with Purpose by Jay Adams, and today I happened across this helpful nugget:

Most homiletics [preaching] books speak about “illustrating” truth and making it “vivid.” But those terms refer to communication by means of appeal to but a single sense: the sense of sight. That failure, so inherent in the very single sense vocabulary of homiletics, has led to dull, lifeless preaching.…If you wish to communicate biblical truth effectively without squeezing it dry, you must learn, rather, to appeal to the range of human senses as the Bible itself does. (pp. 87–88)

Adams then turns to Proverbs 25–28 for a cluster of evocative proverbs which appeal to the senses of hearing and touch as well as sight.

With this in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed today’s ridiculous entry in How to Write Badly Well (one of my new favorite blogs): Focus on one sense to the exclusion of the others.