When I Was A Young Marine Sergeant, Stationed In ...

When I was a young Marine Sergeant, stationed in Yuma Arizona, I worked for a Warrant Officer named, Chris Cox. Now, Warrant officer Cox stood about 6ft 4 inches and weighed just shy of three hundred pounds of solid muscle.

At the time I had just started back to college and I was in my first year of undergraduate course work. I was taking an introductory business class as part of my general education requirements… One day I was telling Warrant Officer Cox about what I had been learning in my college classes…

I was telling him about the communication cycles I had been learning about. I was telling him about what causes communication to break down in the workplace and different strategies to counteract the breakdown of communication and how to foster a positive atmosphere of communication.

I told him that I wanted to hold some training on communication for the troops the next training day that we had scheduled. He pretended as though he was interested and said that would be a good idea… and after a while of my excited ramblings he said, “I took a class like once… have you ever heard about the brick method?”

I very seriously said that I had not and then asked, “What is the brick method?” To which he replied… “It’s simple, when somebody doesn’t listen to what I tell hem… I hit them upside the head with a brick!”

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” (ESV) The Bible gives us many alternatives to the brick method.