I split the group into pairs and give one individual in the pair a prompt to respond to such as, “Talk about a time in your life when you felt proud of yourself,” or “Talk about a time when you felt vulnerable.” While one talks, the other is instructed to listen carefully, without interrupting and without making any kind of noise until the person has finished sharing. Then the person who listened is to report what they heard the other say. I prompt them to focus on not only the words their partner used, but also their body language and tone of voice. What did your partner communicate? What did you hear them say with their words, their posture, their eyes, their tone? When we finish, someone usually confesses, “Wow… that was hard!” The exercise leads us to discuss how difficult it is to listen and be truly present with another person, yet also how valuable. In just a few minutes of focused, active listening, we learn a lot about each other.
In our lectionary passage for this Sunday, James highlights listening as a faithful act. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak.” We are to be hearers of the Word as well as doers. We are also to listen well, to be active and present in our listening so we can hear the truth in faith and humility. Arrogance and self-confidence are highlighted throughout the book as obstacles to hearing the Word of God. If we approach our conversations with arrogant certainty, assuming we already know what will be said and assuming we are in the right, we will deceive ourselves and cut ourselves off from the soul-saving truth.
I appreciated James’ emphasis on listening as I contemplated how difficult constructive dialogue is. Listening is a skill we should spend time developing, especially because there are people among us who are dying to be heard.
“White man, hear me!” James Baldwin wrote in August of 1965, an explosive time in America. In February, Malcolm X was assassinated. In March, John Lewis led 600 peaceful protestors over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where, to the nation’s horror, they were brutally attacked and beaten by state troopers. On August 11, the Los Angeles Watts neighborhood exploded in response to police abuse. Baldwin’s essay “The White Man’s Guilt” calls on white people to be honest with ourselves — to stop claiming we do not see what we see or hear what we hear. The continued relevancy of Baldwin’s words reveals a nation stuck in a cycle of systemic abuse — a nation full of powerful, privileged people who expect to be heard when we speak, but fail to listen when confronted with truths that require us to change.
A meme recently went viral on social media revealing how white society dismisses Black voices no matter how they are expressed. Centered on a photo of a mob gathered around a burning car, the photo’s caption reads, “Why can’t you protest peacefully?” Then it showed a photo of a peaceful Black Lives Matter march with the caption, “No, not like that”; a picture of NFL players taking a knee, “No, not like that”; and a picture of NBA players wearing black T-shirts with “I Can’t Breathe” across their chests, “No, not like that.”
Humility is key to faithful listening. As hearers of the Word, we must be ready to confess how we have failed, the mistakes we have made and the bad habits of not listening we have developed. Here’s a few habits of not listening we should seek to avoid:
- Listening with an agenda. “I hear what you’re saying and I’m going to apply the parts of it I understand to my goals, my plans, my idea of what is right. I will shape your narrative to fit my own.”
- Listening to co-opt or translate another’s story into your own. “I hear what you are saying, and I understand because I’ve experienced something similar. Listen to my story.”
- Listening to dismiss or gain ammunition for a counterattack. “I heard what you were saying. Now listen to me tell you why you are wrong.”
- Listening to the tone of what is said instead of the content. “I heard what she was saying, but she shouldn’t have said it the way she did. She should have used a more respectful tone.”
I’m learning to unlearn my habits of not listening — habits that have protected me from painful truths, but have also inhibited change that would have fueled my growth. The counseling classes I have taken and the therapy sessions from which I’ve benefited have taught me that painful truths cannot be ignored if we ever hope to find our way to health, healing and wholeness. This applies to our social lives as well. We cannot ignore other people’s experiences of us, their words of protest or their truth-telling if we want to live in a healthy society.
Questions for reflection:
- Where did you find yourself in this passage from James? Where did you hear God speaking to you?
- What habits of not listening do you need to unlearn?
- To whom have you not listened? To whom do you need to listen to promote your own growth and that of society?
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