Listening for Right Relationships
Thank you for your prayers for Ron’s surgery. Overall things went well and the surgeon was pleased and optimistic about the longterm outlook. Please pray for complete recovery and healing. He and his family are grateful for all your prayers. -Renée
Good Listening for Right Relationships
I am finding it quite challenging to think about what growing in “right relationships” involves at both the systemic and the individual level. I hope you are enjoying the journey with me. There are undoubtedly others, but I have been thinking and praying about six words—actually concepts—that describe right relationships with one another and with God. Today, let’s think about “listening” as an integral part of “right relationships.”
Previously, we have looked at three words. None of them have a single word equivalence in English; so, I am suggesting that we need to think of them as concepts in English. The word groups usually translated “righteousness” in the Bible are probably better translated as “being in right relationships.” The words usually translated “justice” or “judgment” are probably better translated as “using one’s abilities, gifts, and power to work toward right relationships.” The words often translated as “love” or “steadfast love” are perhaps best translated as “stubborn commitment to want and act for the good of the other person.”
Another very important part of wanting and acting toward “right relationships” is continuing to learn to listen to others. You are honored when people really listen to you. Somehow, it seems a bit more difficult for most of us to remember that it matters every bit as much to others that we really listen to them.
I find it interesting that the Hebrew word shama has to be translated by three different English words in order to work in various Biblical contexts. Sometimes it is translated “hear/listen,” sometimes “understand/attend to,” and sometimes “obey.” Obviously, the word seems to be richer and broader than any one English word can capture.
All three nuances of shama are important in pursuing right-relationships. First, we must pay attention so that we really do physically hear the other person. This is not as automatic as we like to pretend. Quite often when we repeat back to someone what we think they said, they tell us we only got it partly right. Really hearing takes effort. Second, a part of listening involves genuinely desiring to understand what is being said means to the other person—really understanding their point-of-view and their context. We can hear (physically), but not hear (give our attention to understanding) as both Isaiah and Jesus remind us—“hearing they do not hear or understand.” Third, real hearing also involves responding by acting on what we heard—thus the many times the Bible translates shama as “obeying.”
If you have ever taught or parented young children, you are quite aware of how important all three aspects of hearing are. This is especially true in new situations and in dangerous situations. We want the child to really physically listen, and to listen in an attentive manner that leads to understanding, and to act appropriately in response. Most of us need to repent for sometimes not doing the same right-relating to children when they were trying to communicate with us.
These same realities are crucial in close personal relationships as well as in broader community relationships. If I want to keep growing in right-relationships, I need to keep growing in being sure I am really hearing, then growing toward genuinely understanding the other person’s point-of-view in their context, and then responding in a manner that attempts to bring good into the other person’s life.
A few weeks ago, in his teaching at NCF, Bob Husband added another dimension to good listening. I have been thinking about it since and need to continue to do so in the future. Part of that third part of good listening—responding—also needs to occur during the conversation, not just in my responses after the conversation. Good listening is not passive. Good listening means regularly asking questions during the conversation. Some of these questions can be to show that I am hearing and trying to understand the other person’s point-of-view, but some of them need to show that I am helping direct the conversation too. This too is a part of relating rightly as we listen. This reminds me of how often Jesus responded to what others were saying with questions rather than with his own answers or with passivity. And, it reminds me of how often the disciples responded to Jesus with questions right in the middle of his conversations with them.
All of these right-relationship parts of listening also apply in growing in our right-relationship with God. God finds many ways to speak to us through creation, scriptures, other people, stirrings of the Holy Spirit, songs, dreams, etc. We need to hear, we also need to attend to trying to understand God’s point-of-view. And, we need to respond actively.
Responding to God actively does mean ‘obeying.” However, “obey” can sound more like domination than relationship. The “obedience” in the Bible is not a mindless response to someone’s domination and control. Shama describes being in an interactive relationship with God as we grow in listening to God. This sometimes involves questioning God about what we think we are hearing. Think about how often the Prophets of old are described as listening to God by also questioning God in the process. They were active, not passive, listeners in their relationship with God. The same is true in the New Testament. When Peter is told by God in a vision to be willing to eat with Gentiles, he does not hesitate to question, and then question some more. The relationship really is two-way. The same when Paul wants his “thorn in the flesh” removed, and God refuses to say “yes” to the prayer. Paul doesn’t hesitate to find three different ways to question God about this. And, even with the deep right-relationship Jesus has with God, Jesus has to pray three different times in the Garden about his question “If it is possible . . . .”
Let’s pray for continued growth in being good listeners. This is a central part of growing in our “right relationships” with one another and with God.
Next time in right-relationships: “forgiving”. Then finally “peace”.–Ron Simkins, NCF Pastor Emeritus
“Righteousness” in the Hebrew Bible (various forms of tsadiqa) is sometimes translated “justice” in recent translations, but that ignores how often it is paired with shaphat (justice). In the New Testament Greek (various forms of dikaioo and dikaiosune) are occasionally translated “justification/justify,” but “put into a right relationship” would be clearer and maintain the connection with “righteousness” or “being in a right relationship.”
2 Various forms of the Hebrew shaphat/mishpat are the source of most of the biblical translations of the English “justice.” (An exception being the recent tendency to translate “righteousness/tsadiq” as “justice.”) Shaphat/mishpat were often translated into New Testament Greek with various forms of the word krisis/krino.
3 Hesed and Agape