How many arguments and conflicts arise because we assume we understand each other?

This season of the blog is about moving from argument to discussion. Bill Taylor and Terry Kaufman, in previous blogs, have highlighted the need to argue for a few key things but also recognize that we are diverse. So how can we build the kind of unity Terry talked about, in the middle of our diversity?

Well, one place to start might be by listening.

I’m not a very good listener. I developed an occupational hazard as a pastor – I talk way too much. Just ask my wife. A few years ago, I found a book, entitled “The Listening Life” by Adam McHugh that I thought could help. I had read McHugh’s “Introverts in the Church” and found it helpful. I figured this might be too. Let me just say, it was soooooooo much more than just helpful. In fact, in a previous blog, I listed it as one of the books I would recommend to any Christian.

So, for this blog, let me essentially share a book review.

In the Introduction, McHugh opens by saying, “Listening comes first.” He highlights that from the womb we can hear. Yet it takes months of life before speech begins. We are born listeners. McHugh also highlights that “the beginning of discipleship is listening.” Jesus speaks. We follow. As disciples we ought to be good at listening.

But wait, there is too much input. In chapter 1, McHugh mentions, “people living in large cities are exposed to as many as 5,000 advertisements every day.” With that kind of overload, we can’t possibly take in everything. We become selective listeners. That’s good. We need to discriminate between good voices and bad ones. Between necessary ones and those that would simply waste our time. But McHugh cautions, “If only it were as simple as the proverbial whispering angel and devil on our shoulders. It is also a matter of whether we will choose to listen to different voices, voices that don’t sound the same as our own. Will we listen to the voices of different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, and beliefs? Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty? If we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own, we will be limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality.

Choosing to tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable, but it is not transformative.

The rest of the book guides a reader on a journey of growing in listening. McHugh starts that journey with the God who listens. Then helps us grow in our capacity to listen for and to God both in Scripture and creation. Then he starts really messing around by talking about how we listen to others, especially those in pain, and even to ourselves. He ends with a chapter on the church being a listening community. He shares, “It has always been my hope to hear a pastor stand up in front of a worshiping community and say, “we are the body of Christ…that does not mean we are all the same. We are not. We think differently. We experience feelings differently. We have different experiences and perspectives and pasts and hopes for the future. We vote in elections differently. We read the Bible in different ways. We even understand God differently. We as a church are rooted in the great Christian tradition and the creeds the church around the world has affirmed for millennia, but we honor that people are coming from different places and moving at different paces. We honor the questions and the doubts and the struggles that everyone has, and we will never try to silence them or dismiss them…our goal is unity, not uniformity, and we aim for genuine community, not artificial conformity. That means we will disagree, sometimes bitterly, but we will stay at the table and keep listening.”

McHugh’s point is simply this – As much as we are unified in Christ; practically speaking, we must listen to one another to see unity grow.

Could listening – really listening to understand – help move us from argument to discussion?

Neil Bassingthwaighte
ServeCanada Director & Interim Prayer Catalyst