The Listening Dare

The Listening Dare--October 3, 2018

"You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness." [James 1:19-20]

Let me say at the outset here that I understand the irony of a preacher talking about the importance of listening more and speaking less.  

I get it--and I hope that if there is hypocrisy in me or in my words here, that you will both call me out on it and extend the grace of forgiveness to me. (Both are called for--the truth-telling, and the mercy.)  But I do hope that you will believe me that these written reflections here are, in a sense, part of my own way of wrestling with these ancient words, and my own attempt to listen more closely to God's voice in them.  I do hope you will trust me when I say my  intent is to listen more honestly to the challenge of Jesus here in these words from James.  So, okay: it is a little weird to have a preacher talk at you about the importance of talking less and listening more.  Thus ends the disclaimer.

We need these words of James more than any of us wants to admit.  We need someone to point out what so many of our collective angry, bitter and blustering social media posts do not want to face: that our anger does not produce God's righteousness (or God's "justice," if you like that translation). But in fact, we would do better to listen... just to listen... before we each decide we have THE final biting comment that will silence those we do not agree with.

Because here is a truth that keeps boiling over in my gut these days: the shouting isn't helping.  The angry words, the petty insults, the petulant mocking that fills the air and the screens on our rectangles of technology these days, these are not convincing anybody.  Instead, what we are doing to each other is simply to push away people who are watching us and who feel disgusted at our lack of respect for each other, and riling up the people who already agree with us to agree with us more.  

Day by day, I am more and more disappointed.  Sometimes in myself, sometimes in people I know who also profess to name the name of Jesus. My goodness, even dear beloved wise old Atticus Finch let me down terribly in the last couple of years. The disappointment is just to watch and listen to people railing with bitter insistence that they are "right" without qualification, refusing to consider what leads someone else to think differently, and lashing out rather than beginning with compassion.  It breaks my heart to see and to hear people I have known and even loved for years speak (or post) words that cause me to lose respect for them, and to see it continue obliviously, as though they did not know or did not care how they hurt others, and as though they would not listen to any perspective, reason, or fact that did not automatically support what they wanted to hear.  I know that it is hard for any of us to admit that we do such things--and I know I surely have blind spots that I cannot recognize in myself.  Hence my opening disclaimer--where you catch me being hypocritical, spiteful, or acting entitled, please call me out on it.  Where you catch me being unwilling to listen or quick to assume rightness or wrongness without considering facts or authorities, please hold the mirror up to me so I can see it.  Where I have caused you to lose respect for me as well, tell me, so that I can address it and deal with it, and we can  if you will allow it, start over.

Honestly, James' words here are ones I sometimes want to be able to turn away from--if only because he won't let me off the hook when it comes to the challenge of Jesus to love one another genuinely.  And some part of me wishes that James had simply said, "Let everyone be quick to shout their own viewpoint, and the louder you shout it, the more you'll drown out the idiots who disagree with you (and are therefore must be wrong--is that about it, Steve?)"  Some part of me wishes that the Bible gave us permission to hunker down into little clubs of like-mindedness and to lob angry grenades of self-righteousness at people who disagree with us.  Some part of me wishes that Jesus had inspired some writer to instruct Christians, "Whatever you do, don't listen to someone else who doesn't think or speak like you do, because they might just change your mind, and we can't have that!"

But none of these easier-to-swallow notions made it into the Scriptures... because quite simply, none of those are the way of Jesus.   Jesus challenges us, using James' words here, to listen more than we speak, to listen sincerely and with openness to hearing how someone else thinks, and to listen graciously, putting the best possible spin on what they say until we have solid reason to think otherwise.

This is how we begin to make the change that is so desperately needed among us these days.  This is the radical change of course--before registering your friends and neighbors to vote, before rallies or marches, and absolutely before cheap-shot Facebook memes that distort the truth.  We will change things among us by taking up the challenge of Jesus to listen.  

We listen to others, not because listening to someone automatically means you understand, agree, or love someone else--but because understanding and love are not possible without listening.

We listen to others, particularly when we are feeling provoked, not because what we believe doesn't really matter, but especially because it matters.  And the things that matter in life are worthy of the extra care and thought it takes to listen to one another. And if we feel particularly passionate about something, the way to give strength and credibility to our positions is not to become adversarial and force others to do what we say, but to try and convince someone else to consider why you believe what you believe. Even just from a position of self-interest, persuasion of someone else begins with listening to someone else. 

It requires building bridges rather than walls with each other, and that starts with listening.  It requires I no longer settle for the straw-person caricatures out there of "what the other side thinks," which is always easier to criticize, and that we push past to find out how other people actually think, and why they do.  There is still no guarantee we will agree at the end of that listening--but at the very least, the people to whom we have listened will have to grant that we have made a good faith effort to see things from one another's perspectives, to "climb into someone else's skin and walk around in it," as Harper Lee's character once taught us.  And that is where things begin for us.  Listening does not guarantee agreement, but listening does clear the way for civil conversation and for seeing each other's faces.

So this is where I am today. I am disappointed.  I am disgusted.  I am sorry.  And I want there to be a way for us to be hopeful again.  Where I have been a roadblock for you on this journey of faith together, help me to hear it.  I promise you--I will do my utmost to listen.

Lord Jesus, you who have given us the ears to hear, now we pray you would give us the courage to listen with them, so that truth, love, and your kind of righteousness may spring up and flourish.