Listen

Sunday June 29, 2008 • 4 Comments 

By John Immel

In general, Christians are miserable listeners. We are soooo sure we have all the right answers that it never really occurs to us to LISTEN.

Here is an anecdote for what I mean.

I run. There is a park just down the road from my fashionable pad in the thriving metropolis of suburbia USA. I often run down to the park to stretch and do sprints and whatnot. I am hanging on the monkey bars monkeying around when an older gentleman approaches me.

He says to me: “Do you know that God loves you?”

“Yes, I do,” I reply as I change my yoga position.  (BTW, Yoga stretching on the monkey bars is sooo fun.)

“Do you know that He sacrificed His Son on a cross?”

I move to Proud Warrior. “Yes, I do.”

“Do you know why?”

Yes, I do. “He died on the cross to give me access to the covenants of promise and the commonwealth of Israel so that God could end the hostility between Himself and man, so that we could all participate in the Anointing that liberates burdens and destroys yokes, eradicating the penalty of death from the earth.”

(Yes, I said all of that.)

He didn’t even take a breath. He hardly let me finish my sentence. He said, “But do you know why?”

I tilted my head, and said: “He died on the cross to give me access to the covenants of promise and the commonwealth of Israel so God might end the hostility between Himself and man, so that we could all participate in the Anointing that liberates burdens and destroys yokes, eradicating the penalty of death from the earth.”

“But do you know why?” He said fully ignoring my answer.

This time I said, “Stop. You are not listening to my words. You have no interest in my words which means you have no real interest in me as a human being.”

“Okay,” he huffed, “tell me again what you said.”

Hahhahaha…  This is priceless. I said, “No, you have yet to act like I matter. You are offended that I haven’t given you a beautiful opening to tell me that Jesus died for my sins so you can walk me down the Roman Road. Never once did it occur to you to actually listen to me.” And bless his heart; he tried to interrupt me again.

I didn’t let him. “The next time you carry the Gospel in public, try to remember it is about the PEOPLE, not about your desire to preach.” I turned around and started my run.

Listening with an agenda

As I ran that day I fussed in my heart about this encounter. It bothered me on a visceral level that this man hadn’t made any effort to hear my words, or have the humility to engage me as a person.

Unfortunately, these types of interaction with Christians is frighteningly consistent.

Not a week later I was out to lunch with a man who loves to help people. He corralled a waitress and wouldn’t let her go until he got done preaching to her. I found it funny that during the conversation he asked her what she wanted and then gave her no opportunity to answer the question. She, of course, made haste to withdraw from the interaction. While he objected to her unwillingness to listen to his ministry, I pointed out that he really hadn’t bothered to listen for or to her answer.

His reaction was strikingly similar to my monkey bar friend. “Well, I was just trying to be led of the Holy Spirit.” It never really occurred to him to just pay attention to the woman’s words.

With Christians I find that about 97% of the time there is no such thing as a conversation, as defined by a mutual exchange of ideas, thoughts, and personal revelations.  It takes about 15 minutes to realize that the person is logging what you are saying with the express purpose of critiquing or evaluating your words on behalf of some obscure doctrinal point.

There is nothing more tiresome than being invited to share personal thoughts, ideas, and concerns only to realize that the listener’s agenda was to offer correction. (Do you want to know why you don’t have an extraordinary sense of community? Why you can’t seem to find people that connect with you on intimate covenantal levels? It is because you listen with an agenda. People don’t feel safe to be transparent with you.)  Most of you do it so often, so habitually you don’t even know you do it. It doesn’t surprise me that you do: long exposure to the intellectual and spiritual tyranny endemic within Christianity that you’ve been indoctrinated to be hypersensitive to bad “unbiblical” ideas. You have lived with that overwhelming example for so long–listening with an agenda in a personal conversation that it is almost impossible to do otherwise.

This abysmal inability to just listen to folks, to carry no pretense into a conversation is a symptom of stunning spiritual malaise. At its core this is a failure to receive the grace of God, or (more importantly) extend the Grace of God.

In the Arena of Ideas, be as critical as you feel the need. But when you are engaging another human being for the purpose helping, a mutual exchange of ideas, thoughts, and personal revelations, I challenge you to take your own pulse here. Notice how many times you listened to someone’s words and interrupt their commentary to fix a bad idea. Then I want you to pretend that God can raise His own kids. If you have to say it out loud: “God can raise His own kids,” and then just listen to whatever the person says.

Listen without an agenda.



A Step Toward Spiritual Health

Friday June 27, 2008 • 3 Comments 

Can I answer the question: What do I want?”

I ask this question of people often because I find the answers to be interesting and revealing. I am always fascinated by how few folks can successfully answer this question. And in my informal scientific survey, the more the person has been a member of an authoritarian group, the less they can successfully answer that question. The ability to answer this question is foundation to how I would define spiritual health. I won’t go into why I think that just yet, so for this post let’s just assume that my assertion is true. Let’s take our pulse and see if we can honestly effectively answer the question: what do I want?

For many of you, particularly those of you having come from Sovereign Grace Ministries, the sum of your identity is built around a corporate image with leadership as arbitrator and director. I will bet 34 cents that you are having a hard time coming to an effective, clear answer. The heavy authoritarian government model and the doctrines that are/were designed to make you suspicious of your own wants and desires have stunted your capacity to answer that question.

Okay, so let’s practice.

Sit down with a piece of paper and write that question. Then write the answer.

Are you struggling? Do you find yourself endlessly arguing with yourself about what you should want, what you OUGHT to be about? Do you hear the voice of your Leader second-guessing or overriding your thoughts and desires?

Hummm?

Okay…so try again. Put away all of the pretense that has been poured into your soul; there is no agenda, no right or wrong answers.

Many of you will be tempted to write: to do God’s will.

>sigh<

Most of us play a variation of divine charades–two syllables–…feel like God is saying…..  And then we shout out answers desperately hoping someone will tap their nose and point at in your general direction. Usually, we look to a guy who calls himself Pastor and wait for him to pat us on the head and say: “Yeah, verily.” And if we can’t get a pastor to tell us we are suddenly qualified to do God stuff, our loose logic tends to run like this:  “Well, I feel God wants me to be a missionary, and since I really don’t want to go to Africa, that must mean that’s where God wants me.”

So the definition of divine direction is what you don’t want?

“I just want what God wants,” and then saying, “I don’t want to do what God is asking… therefore, THAT must be His will.”

That is really funny.

Tell you what. Let’s try for something a little more mundane. Or maybe better said: a little more definable. Unless you’ve gotten God writing on the walls of your bedroom and you suddenly decided to have an enormous amount of spiritual confidence, God’s will is looking a little hard to fathom.

So, let’s start with fessing up to your real heart’s desire.

Own up to what you want: good, bad, or indifferent. Pretend you are David, standing on the battlefield before he heads out to take on Goliath.  Notice that he asked what the reward for killing Goliath was three times. He had ambitions of his own. He wanted the King’s daughter, and a trip to the Royal Penthouse. News Flash: David had self-interest and self-ish motives. He was a man after God’s own heart.

There is no such thing as a perfect empty vessel with no expectations, or desires, just awaiting God’s use. Think of it this way, for the duration of time at Sovereign Grace Ministries–or any other similar church–you strove to be a perfect empty vessel and who filled you up? If it was God, why do you so desperately crave the affirmations of men?

To find yourself, you will have to define you. “What do I want?”

Start with: I want Strawberry ice cream, or Chunky Monkey or Rocky Road or whatever. It doesn’t matter if you should want it, or if it is good for you, or if someone else thinks you’re fat or if you should really spend money. Write down what you want and then …

The magic moment has arrived. Go get it. Get your keys, drive to the store and buy what you WANT; a pint, a gallon, 50 gallons. Get what you want. Forget weather it is wise or prudent or someone might object. You are not healthy enough to worry about all of that. Your ability to make decisions has been stunted.

For many of you this will be almost impossible. You will be soo terrified that you might want the wrong thing, so paranoid that you will make a bad choice, fearful that you will make a mistake.

Heheheh… welcome to the human race.

Let’s assume its all true. That you run across wants that are wrong, and choices are bad, and mistakes are made. So what? Standing around inert, and motionless, and paralyzed is a superior moral state?

It occurs to me that the harshest judgment went to the guy who buried his talent for fear that his risk-taking would bring his master’s wrath. Uhh… said another way, he  was judged for his paralysis.

Conversely, the guy who took the greatest risk was the recipient of the greatest reward.

This is a standard in the Kingdom of God.

This careful, cautious, worrisome Christianity that gets perpetuated from pulpits by fearful men has sucked us dry of our power because we are sooo afraid that we will be wrong.

Trust me, self-appointment is much better. Start with what you want, and then take action, and let God adjust your direction as He helps you refine what you want.



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