32. We've Been Listening Wrong

At Become New, get 10 minutes of spiritual formation every weekday with John Orberg.

We're learning not to condemn, just give it enough for a let.

Just today.

Now, when Sunday comes round, you can go back to them.

But here's the words today, listen.

And not just listen any particular way.

This fascinating, Jesus says this in Luke 8 verse 18.

Consider carefully how you listen.

And it turns out there is a right way to listen, a good way to listen, a way to listen

that leads to something much greater than just mentalism, superior to a condemnation.

And then there is a wrong way to listen, just experience that quite recently.

There's actually three wrong ways to listen.

And we learn about that from a great psychologist.

I'll start with this very often.

We don't know what's going on with us when we're listening.

We're not even aware of what's happening in our own spirit.

This is from Deborah Tannen's wonderful book.

You just don't understand women, men, and conversation.

Shrides about a publicist listening attentively to a producer of a radio show, tell her how

the studio had come to be built, where it was, why he would have preferred another site.

What caught my attention, she says, was the length of time he was speaking while she was

listening.

He was delivering a monologue, a lecture, detailed info about reception at the two sides,

architecture, the station, so on.

I later asked the publicist if she had been interested in the information the producer

of giving her.

Oh, yes, she answered.

And she found a moment and said, well, maybe he didn't go on a bit.

The next day she told me, I was thinking about what you asked.

I couldn't have cared less what he was saying.

It's just that I'm so used to listening to men go on about things I don't care about.

I didn't even realize how bored I was until you made me think about it.

Listening and listening well and responding when people are being tedious.

So it's actually a great art.

Deborah Tannen writes here about how very often with men and women, one of the differences

in communication styles is men tend to communicate in what she calls report to talk.

I feel obligated to give a report to show my mastery, kind of boy culture runs that way.

So it's often quite fatiguing.

Women, she says, it can be stereotyped, but women often grew up in a culture where they

learn rapport talk.

So they learn to connect communication is stress relieving because it's connectional.

That's why, for example, often she writes, women will say, yes, as a way of saying, I'm

listening to you.

I hear you.

Keep going.

Men, when they say yes, tend to mean I'm agreeing.

And so, of course, there can be a problem between the two of them.

And then there's lots of other different differences in our styles.

For example, she writes, Californians expect shorter pauses than many people from the Midwest.

So in conversations between them, Californians end up interrupting.

Not just that.

She writes, many Americans find themselves interrupting when they talk to Scandinavians.

I'm a Scandinavian Midwesterner.

My wife is a California American.

So you might think that I would get credit for a list then really well, not at all.

And quite frequent comment is, you don't listen and what I'm learning is in a real deep

way, that's very true.

And Nancy, I hope you're listening.

Here's what I just experienced and this gets to the right and wrong ways of listening.

So it's very fresh for me, I was just at an event, it was back east.

And it wasn't at a church, so it wasn't a particularly religious event, but a pastor

was asked to give the invocation to pray to start things off.

Only when he got up, he did a little kind of mini sermon before he did the prayer.

And because that's kind of my line of work, I was listening kind of critically, kind

of thinking I would not do that.

People don't want to hear you give a talk, you're just supposed to pray and sit down.

There's a, I would do it.

And instead he's doing this and I'm like timing him and getting frustrated and impatient.

And then the thought came, I don't know quite how to articulate this, not that it was a

voice from heaven, but it was just a thought, John, seek to listen to this and see, is there

anything you can learn?

Might God have something to say to me, do these words that can help me live better today?

Like I brought God into that moment, into that conversation, and it completely changed

the way that I listened.

I went from listening, judge mentally, to listening to learn.

And I remember years ago I was in a small group and it was led by Sister Jean who was kind

of our spiritual guide, our spiritual director, and she said, now when we gather, everybody

will have sometimes when they speak, it's tempting in a group to select who you're going

to pay attention to and who you want to think.

This person's really smart.

That person's kind of slow.

This person's important.

I should pay attention to them.

That person's kind of needy or they kind of great on me.

She said, don't do that.

Instead, assume God is at work in each other person as God is at work in you and listen

to what God might say to you.

So that's the invitation today.

Listen.

Only this word, Jesus is so brilliant in Luke chapter 8.

Consider carefully how you listen and in any moment, listen to learn.

God, what might there be that could nourish me, that could redirect me, that could guide

me?

How are you speaking to me right now?

Here's the thing.

If I do that, if you do that, and there's a need for discernment, discernment will

be given as you go along.

If something's off, you'll be aware of that.

But if I listen in order to pass judgment, then I will get neither learning nor discernment.

And the great teaching on this also found in Luke 8 is, Jesus is sermon on the parable

of the sower, the sower went to sow seed and the seeds of the Word of God.

Now Dallas will have pointed out often we think about that just as like witnessing, telling

other people about the gospel.

But actually, this is a story for every moment of every day, always words are being

sown.

Words are coming at us.

And then Jesus talks about three of the wrong kind of conditionings.

These are aspects of the wrong way of listening, because he keeps talking about hearing, those

who hear the word.

And here they are.

Some word he says falls on a path.

Can baby rights about this?

So this wrong way of path has been troddened down by people.

And so that's hard soil.

That's a hard heart.

That's me thinking, I already know you got nothing to teach me.

I have my opinions.

I want to take the position of judging what it is that you're saying that's listening

with a hard heart.

And that's not going to be helpful to me.

And then he says, some falls on rocky soil.

Now the idea of rocky soil is not that there are a bunch of rocks on it.

In the Middle East, often there's a thin layer of top soil on rocks.

And that's the kind of ground he's talking about here.

So this is shallow.

And I can listen with a shallow heart where I'm just trying to escape.

I'm just trying to be distracted.

I'm not really fully present.

I'm not focusing.

I'm just listening in a shallow way.

And that's not going to be helpful.

And then he talks about there's a third kind of person that listens.

And initially that word comes in, but the cares of this world, deceitfulness of riches,

the worries of life.

In other words, this is cluttered soil.

This is where my mind is so preoccupied that I'm unable to actually be with you and listen

to you and ask God, what do you have to say to me through this person?

But then Jesus says there is good and noble soil.

And that's the person who hears and takes it to heart.

So that's the invitation today.

As you walk through the day, as I walk through the day, we will be, there'll be many words

thrown at us.

That's what the soar does.

And from lots of different sores.

And instead of thinking, okay, now I'm going to listen in order to pass judgment on somebody,

I'm going to dismiss this person.

I already know what's coming there.

I don't need to pay attention to this.

I said, listen to learn, today listen to learn.

This is humble listening.

God, what do you have to teach me?

As I do that, if there's error or problems or something wrong, God will make that clear.

But that's listening with a good heart.

And that sets me up, see, when I do it that way, to listen beyond condemnation because

my posture is just as God is at work in me.

So God is doing something with this other person.

He's concerned about this other person all the time.

And God will have something for me to learn.

Oh, what a good thing it is to live a life beyond condemnation.

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