Martin Buber talks about “three spheres in which the world of relation is built,” on page 149 of I and Thou. “The first: life with nature, where the relation sticks to the threshold of language. The second: life with men, where it enters language. The third: life with spiritual beings, where it lacks but creates language.”
This really emulates how we go about life. First, we enter this world as babies – we don’t understand language and we are getting acclimated to this planet that we have just been introduced to by seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and hearing. We have relationships with our families, but it is a relationship of mere dependence. We don’t really understand much at all, but we are taking it all in.
Then when we introduce language, reciprocity in relationship is cultivated. We can learn and understand more about the world and the people in our lives. We begin to benefit the lives of others because we can use our language and understanding to empathize with people.
Some people stop there, but others will search deeper for understanding. We understand the world at a surface level, but the religious dimension of mankind is longing to understand at a deeper level. God doesn’t necessarily use language in His relationships with His creation. He creates His own inner language through overwhelming grace and peace that it more real than any language that we could orally understand.
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