I am guilty as charged! For what? Not listening. My wife reminds me everyday how guilty I am when she has to repeat what she just told me. We may say it is “selective hearing” but all joking aside, it is a huge problem in our society today. My church denomination is having “Listening Sessions” this year around a very sensitive issue on how we plan to move forward regarding matters of human sexuality and unity. The way forward is to be determined next Spring and will most likely affect our denomination forever. My message this week is about effective listening to one another.
Wikipedia describes listening as the attention we give to sounds such as speech, music or nature. It involves a complex affective, cognitive, and behavioral process. You can dive into the google world and learn a whole lot about our abilities or lackluster attempts to listen. Active listening in one article says it is the most important skill we can have. Unfortunately, most of us are not using our skill very effectively as between 25-50% of what we hear we remember. We should make a conscience effort by first paying attention. We should make eye contact, put our own thoughts on hold and then provide feed back to the person talking confirming we understand what was said. A good source to learn more on active listening is at www.mindtools.com.
My church denomination started a commission on a way forward as mentioned above several years ago. Harmful behaviors mentioned in the report is interrupting, ignoring, discounting other’s opinions, speaking on behalf of others, or exhibiting a domineering behavior to others. These harmful behaviors do not promote effective listening, in my opinion. We all have opinions, but perhaps we all need to learn how to first listen to another’s opinion before jumping into our point of view. We can all take scripture passages to prove our point but to me it is not about proving our point. It is about listening to each other with the intention to understand each other’s position. Most arguments are not about the superficial actions that started the conflict. In my opinion, the argument stems from a lack of proper communication. One person may specifically ask for something, where the other person, without thinking reacts. The action of the first person causes a reaction of the second person yielding a negative result. If the second person considered the question more thoroughly, perhaps the result may have been more positive. I believe many of us tend to speak on behalf of others assuming we know the answer. I am sure we all had situations during our Thanksgiving holiday that could have gone better, if we had listened more effectively. As we start Advent leading up to Christmas Day, let us all be aware of the power of listening with the intent to first understand before imposing our own thoughts.
John 18:33-37 tells us the story of how Pilate heard only what he wanted to hear about Jesus. Let us not listen with the intent to only hear what we want to hear. The passage ends with these words, “Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.”
May we listen for the purpose of understanding the whole story.
T