The Good Listener - Pt 1

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19-20 ESV). Today we begin a little series about listening. Listening is one of the easiest things we can ever do. Yet we make it one of the most difficult. It doesn’t demand the initiative and energy required in speaking. That’s why “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (cf. Romans 10:17). The point is that hearing is easy, and faith is not an expression of our activity, but our receiving the activity of another. It is “hearing with faith” (cf. Galatians 3:2,5) that accents the achievements of Christ and thus is the channel of grace that starts and sustains the Christian life. But despite this fact, or perhaps precisely because of it, we often fight against it. In our sin, we’d rather trust in ourselves than another, amass our own righteousness than receive another’s, speak our thoughts rather than listen to someone else. True, sustained, active listening is a great act of faith, and a great means of grace, both for ourselves and for others. The charter text for Christian listening might be our reading today. It’s simple enough in principle; even though it is nearly impossible to live. Too often we are slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to anger. So learning to listen well won’t happen overnight. It requires discipline, effort, and intentionality. You get better with time and practice. Becoming a better listener hangs not on one big resolve to do better in a single conversation, but on developing a pattern of little resolves to focus in on particular people in specific moments. So, over the next few days we will explore six lessons in good listening. The first lesson is that good listening requires patience. Recently I received an email from someone claiming to the attorney for a client I had seen twice. Without going into any detail, suffice it to say, I needed much more assurance that they were who they purported to be and signed releases before I was willing to discuss the client’s situation with them. I was met with a good deal of impatience as I was told, “We have a court date on Wednesday (this was Monday), and I need this information now.” The attorney was talking, but I’m not sure they were listening. An email was not sufficient proof for me to release anything except very basic information. They were angry and threatening. Patience was missing from this conversation. It was a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is always an impatient, inattentive listening, that results in merely waiting for a chance to speak. Perhaps we think we know where the speaker is going, and so already begin formulating our response. Or we were in the middle of something when someone started talking to us, or have another commitment approaching, and we wish they were done already. Or maybe it’s because our attention is divided by our external surroundings or our internal rebounding to self. Whatever the cause, many of us are too preoccupied with ourselves when we listen. Instead of concentrating on what is being said, we are busy either deciding what to say in response or mentally rejecting the other person’s point of view. Positively, then, good listening requires concentration and that we hear the other person until they’re done speaking. Rarely will the speaker begin with what’s most important, and deepest. We need to hear the whole thought. Good listening is attentive and patient, externally relaxed and internally active. It takes energy to block out the distractions that keep bombarding us, and the peripheral things that keep streaming into our consciousness, and the many good possibilities we can spin out for interrupting. When we are people quick to speak, it takes Spirit-powered patience to not only be quick to hear, but to keep on hearing.