You don’t need to spend long in biblical counselling circles before you hear something about listening. The art of interpersonal ministry is pretty much bound up with it. For how can we know what to say unless we listen? Sermons don’t require listening (though pastors who know their people have distinct advantages over a visiting preacher who doesn’t), but interpersonal ministry absolutely does. That’s what makes it personal – when someone takes the time to listen carefully and adjusts their speech accordingly.
Listening, Proverbs tell us, is a matter of wisdom. For ‘to answer before listening—that is folly and shame’ (Proverbs 18:13). If we are going to speak truth specifically and incisively into a person’s life, we must know which truths we are going to choose. There are so many biblical truths to pick from; so many words from the Lord we could declare. Listening is what helps us decide which it is we are going to speak. Listening also helps us decide when and how we will speak that truth. Is this a situation for urgent words of warning or gentle words of encouragement. Only listening will help us decide.
James urges his readers to ‘take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry’ (James 1:19). For James, being quick to listen goes hand in hand with being slow to speak and slow to become angry. The bad listener, it seems, is the person who dives in quickly, showing an anger that is shaped by their failure to understand the situation into which they are speaking.
But what kind of listening? The art of listening is more complicated than we might like to think. For a start, what do you listen with?
Listening with our ears
Here’s the obvious one. With our ears we listen to the words that another speaks. Even here, however, good listening has a measure of complexity. For it’s not just words we listen to. We also need to listen to the silences – as, for example, when things are so awful for someone that words fail them.
But there’s more. We can listen to the intake of breath that precedes certain words. And the sighs. And the errs and ums that communicate a hesitation which radically changes the sense of what is being said.
We can also listen to the volume – both volume as in quantity and volume as in decibels. Both provide clues about the intensity of feelings that are associated with what is being talked about. Strong feelings and the volume increases; fearfulness and the volume is often turned down. There’s much, much more to this listening with our ears, but let’s move elsewhere.
Listening with our eyes
We might notice the neglected appearance and slowed movements of someone struggling with depression. That’s a very different kind of listening and can helps us hear the depth of depression and struggle a person is facing. In the same kind of way, we might listen to the agitated movements that speak about anxiety or the suspicious glances that communicate paranoia. When our ears are hearing one thing and our eyes are hearing something else, it’s time to ask some more questions. It tells us that there is more listening to be done.
Listening with our hearts
On occasions a conversation can press an emotion upon us without the use of words. It may not be expressed or even hinted at by a person’s words, but the longer we listen, the more clearly we can feel it. Perhaps it’s a sense of emptiness and loss; or irritation and anger; or sadness and regret. Empathic listening connects with such feelings – so that we hear them in our hearts. And listening with our hearts means we don’t just know what to say, but we also know how to say it.
Jesus was good at this. Extraordinarily good. ‘He knew what was in each person’ (John 2:25). Those who encountered him felt understood at the deepest level – ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did’ said the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:29). Sometimes that knowing was unnerving – ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’ said Peter (Luke 5:8) – but always it was accurate. And it meant Jesus knew how to speak.
Listening is a skill. And like all skills it improves with practice. But happily, this skill isn’t a technique that we try or a persona that we adopt. It is an expression of humility, and it is an expression of love. It says, ‘I don’t know but I do want to understand.’ And on that humility and love are built every one of our communities of faith.
