The magazine article in my hands reviewed a book by a Christian leader with whom I rarely see eye-to-eye. Without realizing it, my immediate reaction to the article was one of distaste and mistrust. My unconscious thought was that the author wouldn’t have much of value to say and therefore I should simply turn the page. Out of habit, though, my eyes scanned the opening paragraphs of the article and picked up a few ideas that resonated with me. That halted me from following through with the intended knee-jerk reaction. In that moment it became clear that I was using an inappropriate screen that tainted my perceptions without giving his ideas a fair chance.
I am a big believer in consciously developing your worldview in order to (hopefully) reflect God’s view of the world. But I wonder how many times a day the worldview I have embraced serves as an excuse to ignore uncomfortable viewpoints – that is, a set of attitudes that use my worldview as a reason to experience reality through a limited and self-defeating filter.
Ours is an age of sound bites and symbolism. When we hear a particular name or idea we often have an immediate response: either our defenses go up or we open up to the coming ideas based on the mental image we have of the communicator. It is a black-and-white view of the world, as if people of differing ideological or theological viewpoints lack valid ideas. So much of our screening is based on the image of the person that we possess. Wary of wasting time, we protect ourselves from ideas that we assume will clash with our own. Weary of ideological conflict, we openly entertain ideas that coincide with our own and carefully block the rest.
That moment of enlightenment reminded me of the interviews I had conducted with leaders for the Master Leaders book I’d written not long ago. One of the greatest lessons I’d gleaned from the 30 high-performance leaders interviewed for the book related to the importance of listening. I recalled that listening was ranked as the most important skill of a leader. And Ken Blanchard’s comment that you cannot listen effectively unless you’re willing to have your mind changed by what you hear caused me to reconsider how good a listener I am. (Obviously not as good as I need to be, if you’re wondering.)
Upon reflection it became obvious that one of my shortcomings was that I had limited “listening” to the process of hearing the spoken word. I had ignored the written word as communication that we listen to, as well.
After catching myself in that indefensible act of censorship, I returned to the beginning of the article by my liberal colleague and tried to read it as objectively as possible. To my surprise, he had some intriguing things to say – not necessarily views that I chose to embrace, but perspectives that were more reasonable than I would have given him credit for prior to reading the piece. Ah, another humbling moment…
There are certainly limitations as to how far you can take this argument. For instance, the time crunch is a reality: you simply cannot devote time to listen to every nuance of every competing argument on every topic that intersects with you life. You would be deluged with information, mired in continual debates, and never get anything done. (Which, as some wags might point out, qualifies you to be a member of Congress.) But I wonder how much wisdom I miss by screening out too much of the content that I assume will be of no value based solely on cues such as the leanings of the author or the location of an article. Are there helpful insights to absorb by hearing from people who are ideologically distant from you? Does selective listening, efficient though it may seem, produce diminishing returns?
July 1, 2010
A colleague of mine recently commented that being an adult is exciting because you never have to stop learning. Her attitude of lifelong learning results in a humility that allows the Lord to speak to her from many diverse sources. None of us is so well-versed in the Christian worldview that we cannot learn more, even (especially?) from those with whom we disagree. Thanks for the reminder.
July 1, 2010
“But I wonder how much wisdom I miss by screening out too much of the content that I assume will be of no value based solely on cues such as the leanings of the author or the location of an article.”
WISDOM
Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Prov 4:5
And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. Luke 2:52
Wisdom –
1. God’s perspective
2. Skilled in the art of Godly living
3. Seeing the relationship bewtween the problems in life and the principles of scripture which have been violated.
Listening/reading – These (Bereans) were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Modern age —TMI (too much information)
Narrow your sources, why?
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Jn 17:17
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Jn 15:3
July 1, 2010
“A religious group matures and improves only by correcting its flaws, and usually the enemies of that group can help it to see those flaws better than its friends can. [Our] enemies … [provide] some of the most brilliant analyses of the failures and weaknesses of our churches and our theology. There is far more to be learned from them than from friends who flatter and patronize us, but fail to tell us the truth that hurts. I hope that by studying the arguments of our enemies we will recognize our sins, confess them, and work to cleanse ourselves of them.”
~ Tony Campolo (Partly Right)
I like to think of the “big picture” as a puzzle. Somehow all the pieces link up, yet, they are all different. My fear is that I spend too much time looking for the one piece to spend all my time on. I want to challenge myself to experience the discussions of atheists, homosexuals, Catholics, Buddhists, et al.
Does it dilute my faith or theology? I don’t think so. I think it enables me to fill in more pieces of the puzzle than if I throw away all the pieces that seem ugly to me.
July 5, 2010
Ah, the balancing act between standing on the word of God as written and being teachable. It is especially difficult these days in light of so many in the church who wish to reinterpret or adapt the Bible to a postmodern world. The Bible is the word of God, the very God who is unchanging. We must daily and radically change to conform to His wisdom. The secret is to remember the origin of truth: does man decide truth, or does God decide truth? When we look to God for truth, we are on safe ground, but if we look to man, or the “educated” authority that man-as-higher-critic often presumes, to constantly reinterpret or redefine the word of God, then we have usurped God’s authority. To interpret the Scriptures according to the tenets of conservatism or liberalism or any other ism we care to dream up is a subtle idolatry, for if these tenets become the filter through which we interpret the Bible, rather than the other way around, then we have dethroned God as the ultimate judge and placed our ideological idols in His place.