Listen!

He who answers before listening - that is his folly and his shame.  Proverbs 18:13

Do you think of yourself as a good listener? Probably we all do - it may never have occurred to us that we're not. But I've a feeling that most of us are far better talkers.

I had an interview with a bank employee once - we needed to talk about a mortgage or something. As I explained our need I could see her eyes glancing down at various papers on her desk. She kept murmuring "Mmm", "Yes, mmm", "I see", "Of course", but I just knew she wasn't actually listening to me. I wanted her to look at me and give me her full attention. It made me quite angry. 

And what about those times you're talking to someone in a room full of people, and you can see their eyes looking over your shoulder, obviously more interested in what's going on behind you than in what you are saying. One of the biggest complaints about doctors, politicians and other influential people is "I never felt he really listened to what I was saying".

Well, I'm sure I am as guilty in this area as anyone else. So this verse in Proverbs is a good wake-up call. To concentrate seriously on what someone is saying is enormously important. At the very lowest level, it's just plain good manners. But, more to the point, it's a way of saying "You matter to me! I see you as a real person, a human being, not just a shape filling a bit of a space in my life". To feel that someone has really taken the trouble to listen to you is massively reassuring and encouraging; it enhances your sense of self-worth.

Listening to someone, then, is about respecting them, treating them as important, as an equal. So why do we often find it so difficult? There may be various reasons. 

First, we are just too plain busy - we don't have the time to stop and listen. But, let's not kid ourselves, we would happily make time if the other person was someone we valued. 

Second, we are so full of ourselves that the only opinion that matters is mine; we don't mean to ignore the other person, but subconsciously we just aren't interested. We are arrogant. That's why, as the writer says, we are tempted to answer before taking in what they are saying - as if to say "Now look, I've got this right, so will you please shut up and take it from me".

Third, perhaps we are afraid that what we hear might challenge some prejudice of ours; we are too lazy to do some serious thinking and adjust our views accordingly. Or we are afraid the other person might make some kind of demand of us. If we listen to what they say we might feel under an obligation to do something, and that would upset our comfortable life. 

Fourth (let's be totally honest), that other person is just so boring. Well, all right, perhaps they don't have much sparkle to their conversation. But can you imagine Jesus stifling a yawn and turning away from some poor soul who rattled on a bit?
  

These are all things it's good to think about. 

But there's something else here too. When we take care to listen there's a good chance that we will be doing ourselves a favour as well. Who has never said to themselves "If only I had listened to what so-and-so said! It might have saved me from disaster"? No wonder Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." And, as a Sunday school teacher said to me many years ago, "It's no accident that God has given us two ears and only one mouth..."

Is it time to cultivate the grace, the skill, of being a good listener?

Lord God, please forgive me for being so full of my little self that I fail to listen properly to others. Teach me to be a better listener - listening to you, listening to wise people, and, yes, even listening to those I find tiresome. Amen.