Listening

Our basic anatomy of two ears and one mouth is highly suggestive. We probably should do twice as much listening as speaking. If speaking is a spiritual discipline, refraining from speech to listen to the words of others or to God’s word is equally crucial to living Christianly. The control factor, however, is more subtle and more demanding in the case of listening. Marshall McLuhan makes the rather obvious suggestion that nature has not equipped us with ear-lids. So we compensate for what he calls “nature’s oversight” by selective listening (McLuhan and Fiere, p. 111). Rather than consider this internal control as an oversight, we could regard it as a divinely planned opportunity for spiritual growth. So Jesus says, “Consider carefully how you listen” (Luke 8:18), not only because all will be revealed eventually (Luke 8:17), but because if you listen well, you will gain even more to hear. So listening is a key to the inner treasures of the soul.

Listening and Self-Discipline

James says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19). The context refers to both listening to others and listening to the Word of God (James 1:21), two facets of listening that are inextricably interrelated. Instead of finishing another’s sentence, we should listen to the soul expressed in the words. She who holds her tongue in check is in control of her whole person (James 3:2-4). Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his classic Life Together says, “Thus it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him” (p. 92). So both speaking and listening involve discernment. Speaking metaphorically, Job says, “Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?” (Job 12:11), a point with which the young man Elihu fully concurs (Job 34:3-4) as he invites Job along with the three unfriendly “comforters” to “learn together what is good.”

So the self-discipline involved in the ministry of listening is not just how we listen but to what. While we are inundated by a thousand advertisements and siren appeals to the flesh every day, we should heed Solomon’s advice of “turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding” (Proverbs 2:2; compare Proverbs 23:12), whether it is a life-giving rebuke (Proverbs 15:31), the law (Proverbs 28:9) or the cry of the poor (Proverbs 21:13). Listening not only is selective; it should be. We must systematically reduce certain influences in order to attend to those that make us truly wise.

Listening as a Relational Gift

The apostle Paul expounded the metaphor of the body suggesting that some people are like the ears (1 Cor. 12:17). He was, however, promoting interdependence rather than delegation of listening ministry to certain specially endowed members. James exhorts all believers to be “quick to listen” (James 1:19), which he links in the same verse to “slow to become angry.” We are less likely to feel thwarted and, therefore, get angry if we know what is going on inside another person. Further, if we listen deeply to the soul of another, we will more likely be confronted with our own shortcomings (James 1:21), more willing to listen to ourselves and less likely either to provoke to anger or to be so provoked. By listening, we renounce control over the one who is speaking and communicate worth.

Listening is a relational compliment. This is true not only for fellow human beings but of God himself. By opening our hearts to hear God’s word, we worship God and pay the greatest compliment possible. The reverse is also gloriously true: that God speaks “with his ears.” By patiently attending to our cry (Psalm 17:6; Psalm 31:2; Psalm 34:15; Isaiah 59:1), God communicates his love as eloquently as in his articulated speech. His silence is both revelatory and evocative. In the same way, our willingness to cultivate the discipline of solitude is a profound statement of the esteem with which we hold God and our availability to his speech. Richard Foster says, “One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. . . . One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let our justification rest entirely with God. We don’t need to straighten others out” (p. 88).

How to Listen

It is widely recognized that the starting point in all counseling relationships is listening. The same is manifestly true for friendships and in deepening a marriage relationship. By listening we convey our desire to understand, to take seriously the viewpoint of another. When we listen, we refrain from giving advice, preaching or even expressing an opinion until we have first taken the person seriously and gained trust (Collins, p. 290). Adapting the advice given by the psychiatrist Armand Nicholi, we can summarize the following dimensions of listening: (1) having enough awareness of one’s own conflicts to avoid reacting in a way that interferes with the person’s free expression of thoughts and feelings; (2) avoiding subtle verbal or nonverbal expressions of negative judgment; (3) waiting through periods of silence or tears until the person summons up the courage to say more; (4) hearing not only what the person says but what he or she is trying to say; (5) using both ears and eyes to detect messages that come from tone of voice, posture and other nonverbal cues; (6) avoiding looking away while a person is speaking; (7) limiting the number of mental excursions into one’s own fantasies while another is speaking; (8) practicing the full acceptance of the person no matter what is said (Collins, pp. 26-27).

The last point deserves more comment. To accomplish acceptance through listening without condoning or condemning is spiritually demanding. To do this without condemnation, one must have experienced deep forgiveness in one’s own life, since we condemn or condone what is still unresolved in our own past. And to show acceptance of a fellow sinner without excusing sin cannot be done without compassion, that quality that links us so closely with the heart of God. So listening, like speaking, reveals the person, casts us on God for his grace and invites us to move forward in the life of discipleship.

Listening as a Spiritual Discipline

Just as speech reveals the person, so the quality of listening reveals the soul within. Stopped-up ears come from hearts “as hard as flint” (Zech. 7:11-12). Open ears reveal a tender and responsive soul. This is true whether one listens to God or to another person. By learning to attend to the thoughts, feelings and values of others, we are positioning ourselves to attend to God. Of course, the reverse is equally true. Bonhoeffer puts it negatively: “But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God” (p. 98). That prattle leads to the famine prophesied by Amos, not of food or water but “of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:10-12). Good speakers are good listeners. They have the “instructed tongue” of those who have learned from God in their own lives and therefore are able to sustain the weary with their own words (Isaiah 50:4). God opens the mouth of his servant by wakening the ears of that servant, just as Jesus opened the mouth of the mute person by opening his ears (Mark 7:33), a sign that the day of salvation had truly arrived (Isaiah 35:5-6).

Those unready to obey what they hear from God are called “dull of hearing” (Matthew 13:15 KJV), implying that they have their internal ear-lids down (Mark 8:18; Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29). Sometimes this willful stoppage is accomplished by externally plugging the ears (Acts 7:57), but more commonly it is an internal predisposition not to hear because they are unwilling to obey, something that the apostles of Jesus called “uncircumcised in heart and ears” (Acts 7:51 NRSV). The ear as an organ of reception has not yet heard the full joy and beauty of heavenly sound (1 Cor. 2:9). Heaven will be the ultimate listening experience, as the book of Revelation shows (Rev. 4-5), and we live with true heavenly mindedness by practicing the disciplines of faithful (that is, faith-full) listening to Scripture, to the hearts of others and to the voice of God speaking to us in our life experiences.

» See also: Counseling, Lay

» See also: Speaking

» See also: Teaching

References and Resources

D. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. J. W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row, 1954); G. R. Collins, Christian Counseling: A Comprehensive Guide (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1980); R. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (New York: Harper & Row, 1978); M. McLuhan and Q. Fiere, The Medium Is the Message (New York: Bantam, 1967); J. Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, 4 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, trans. M. Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964).

—R. Paul Stevens