Listening in a Loving Way, Part Two
It’s hard to listen, and even counselors struggle with it at times, but listening pays great dividends in our relationships. Take the time to examine how well you listen, and refocus your efforts on listening more and talking less. You may be amazed that your frustration level will diminish, and your fondness will grow.
At one time or another, you’ve probably heard someone say in a dismissive tone, “I’m just not a good listener!”
Whether we get distracted by what we plan to say next, are easily offended by unfair criticism, or feel overwhelmed by needing to find the right words to reply, quality listening is complicated.
Add to that the fact that we tend to view ourselves better than we are, and we tend to view others as worse than they are, and quality listening becomes a complicated dynamic that many fail to adequately understand.
However, if we are going to pursue a habit of loving listening in our relationships, we must heed the many warnings about lousy listening from Proverbs. Failing to listen is not a laughing matter.
The previous post described four benefits of loving listening. However, Proverbs also gives us four warnings or results if we fail to listen. We undermine our effectiveness and damage our relationships when we don’t listen well. Lousy listening dishonors God and those around us.
1. Lousy Listeners are Prideful (Prov. 18:2)
Proud people don’t need the details; they already know the answer. In your conversations, how certain are you that you are right?
Some people go through life constantly correcting others, presuming to be an expert on almost everything, yet failing to realize they are more like the people they critique than they are different. Those around them feel unwanted and unneeded because their opinion is never heard; the proud person simply tells them what they should do.
Proverbs 18:2 says we imitate the fool if we don’t choose loving listening, and we allow our pride to disregard others around us. Pride becomes destructive in relationships, and most of the time, the proud person has no idea that the “proud” shoe fits them nicely.
If you are spending far more time talking than listening, pride is often at the root, and this warning may be one that you need to take seriously.
2. Lousy Listeners Look Foolish (Prov. 18:13)
In high school, I worked at one of the top restaurants in the country. They took great pride in their service, and their food was consistently excellent. It always amazed me how many of their top servers could go to a table, take 4-6 dinner orders with no pen or paper, and enter the order correctly, all from memory. It took extraordinary listening and memory in a noisy dining room of 400 guests. However, some servers took notes and wrote it all down. The owner didn’t care; he just wanted to ensure that the details were heard correctly and that the food reflected the customer’s wishes. Bringing out the wrong order or getting the details wrong made us all look foolish and was not tolerated.
When we are lousy listeners, we will often get the details wrong, and we, too, can look foolish. Proverbs 18:13 reminds us that a wise man will listen first and speak after.
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Sympathy Without Distress
Our final joy and eternal well-being are certain. Jesus has no guesswork as to our fate. While far from unfeeling, he is not tossed by the waves, as we are this side of heaven. Jesus is the Shepherd of the sheep, the Groom of his bride, guiding us home through a world of distress to springs of living water,
“Only remember me,” Joseph requested, “when it is well with you, and please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house” (Genesis 40:14). Though he sat in prison, Joseph had just interpreted the cupbearer’s dream favorably: he would be restored to his former height in three days. “Only remember me to Pharaoh,” Joseph asked.
In three days, the cupbearer was taken from the cell as foretold. It will only be a matter of time now, Joseph thought. Three more days passed. Five days. A week. “Two whole years” (Genesis 41:1). Nothing. Once ascended to his former place, “the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him” (Genesis 40:23).
When you think of the ascended Christ, do you imagine someone like this cupbearer? Has he who once descended into our pit and suffered for our sins — only to rise to a better life three days later — forgotten us?
Perhaps you expect his attention when he returns, but until then, he basks in the angel’s praises, grips the scepter firmly in hand, and with our prison far behind him, you suspect that you remain little upon his heart.
Sympathy of the Prince
William Gurnall (1616–1679) gives a moving illustration in reply:
Suppose a king’s son should get out of a besieged city, where he had left his wife and children, whom he loves as his own soul, and these all ready to die by sword or famine; if supply come not the sooner, could this prince, when arrived at his father’s house, please himself with the delights of the court, and forget the distress of his family? (The Christian in Complete Armor, 31)
Right now, Jesus thinks of me, he thinks of you, as this prince who has left his bride and children behind. He has not forgotten us, coronated as he is in glory, just as any good man could not for a moment forget his family shackled in sorrows in an evil land. If we who are sinful are moved at the distress of our loved ones, how could Christ, whose name is love, disregard the sufferings of his family still on earth?
If you’re tempted to feel forgotten, be reminded that right now Christ loves his bride with a love surpassing knowledge (Ephesians 3:19). His heart toward us from heaven deserves more thought than many of us give it. Consider first how un-cupbearer-like our ascended Christ is, and then why Christ does “please himself with the delights of the court” while still not forgetting “the distress of his family” — and why that is such good news for us.
He Has Not Forgotten
Jesus, our King, has departed into glory, leaving us here on earth. And unlike the prince in Gurnall’s illustration, Jesus prays we remain temporarily apart, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15). But in order that we might not draw false conclusions, on the eve of his death Jesus also says in several ways, “I will not forget you.”
He assures them, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). He promises, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. . . . Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:18–19).
When sorrow fills their hearts at this news, he ensures that he means their good: “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). He guarantees, “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).
On the darkest night in history, Christ carries his people upon his heart in prayer to his Father: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). And this he prays for you and me as well: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word” (John 17:20).
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Is Math Racist?
Students who are taught that answers to algebra problems depend on the color of their skin and that calculus professors are oppressors are not only not going to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but they will also believe what is not true about who they are and the world in which they live. Woke educators may hope to liberate students. But by depriving them of objective truths they are subjugating them to bad ideas. It’s a tragically ironic and disastrous miscalculation.
Few subjects seem less political than math. There is little room for subjective judgment because its truths are universal. No matter what you look like or where you’re from or how you feel about it, two plus two will always equal four, and the area of a circle will always be π r². Math is so objective, in fact, some scientists have theorized that prime numbers could offer the basis of communication with supposed intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.
However, even if aliens know that math has no racial or gender bias, some educators on Earth seem to think otherwise. Even amid plummeting math scores in the latest Nation’s Report Card data, a growing chorus of progressive voices insists that racism and sexism are the biggest problems we face in how to teach math.
A couple years ago, in an article in the Scientific American, Rachel Crowell complained about the racial and gender disparities among those who make a career out of mathematics. She pointed out, for instance, that “fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African Americans” and that only 29.1 percent “were awarded to women.” More mathematicians, she writes, have been pushing to discuss these issues and “force the field to confront the racism, sexism and other harmful bias it sometimes harbors.”
Though, undoubtedly, examples of identity-group bias in all fields exist, Crowell chose to root her complaint in intangibles: Math doctorates are not “earned” or “received” or “completed;” they are “awarded,” a word choice that not so subtly reinforces her conclusion that something about math education is racist.
Writing at Newsweek, Jason Rantz cited examples of public schools teaching students that math itself, and the way it has always been taught, is oppressive.
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Top 50 Stories on The Aquila Report for 2023: 21-30
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 21-30.
In 2023 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 21-30:Parents And the Apostasy of Covenant Children
Among what these principles teach is that when a parent loves his family first and foremost, he neither loves God nor his family aright. One loves his children above God by pursuing their happiness rather than their Godliness, their respectability rather than their need for righteousness in Christ. Even to seek equally both happiness and Godliness is to deny God. It is to deny the primacy of a biblical pursuit of God, and that all blessings beyond knowing Christ are incidental to seeking first the kingdom of God. It’s to pursue God’s favor apart from thirsting after Christ. What can be more subtly idolatrous for the Christian?
Blasphemy in the Presbyterian Church in America: A Reflection before the General Assembly
Does he believe sexual immorality is shameful (Eph. 5:12) and corrosive (1 Cor. 6:18) and ought not to be discussed, or does he believe that being a ‘[insert sin here] Christian’ is just another form of Christian experience? Does he believe that it is blasphemy to associate Christ’s holy name with enduring sin and to make that sin central to one’s identity, experience, personhood, or ‘authentic self,’ or does he think it is needless alarmism and decidedly unwinsome to object strenuously to such obviously worldly notions?
Big Eva Says Out with Complementarianism, In with Anti-Fundamentalism
Moore is a former Southern Baptist leader and Gospel Coalition council member who is now the editor of Christianity Today magazine. The mere fact that he’s now the editor there shows something is afoot, given that Moore was historically strongly complementarian and Christianity Today has long been egalitarian. As I noted in a previous post, Moore wrote a column in March of this year saying that evangelicals needed to rethink their gender wars. Though obviously in a Moore style rather than a Keller one, it is an almost perfect instantiation of Keller’s framework and strategy.
Movie Review: Nefarious
There is so much to appreciate about this film, and not just because it’s a good movie. Nefarious is a theologically orthodox explanation about God, the Devil, and the cosmic battle which occurs every day for a person’s soul.
2023 Orthodox Presbyterian Church General Assembly Report – UPDATED
For the election of a new moderator the following were nominated: Rev. Bruce Prentice (Mandon, ND), Elder Bruce Stahl (Wentzville, MO) and Rev. John Shaw (general secretary of OPC Home Missions). After a vote Mr. Shaw was declared elected. Rev. Danny Olinger (general secretary of OPC Christian Education), who had nominated Mr. Shaw, led in prayer for the newly elected moderator.
Schools in the Presbyterian Church in America
With respect to membership, PCA churches with schools are significantly larger. The average PCA church has 230 members on its rolls on average. Churches with schools average 630 members, while those without average 190. They have both more communicant members (500 vs. 148) and non-communicant members (131 vs. 41).
The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism
As fate—or perhaps providence—would have it, Darby’s premillennial eschatology and the stark intensity of his heaven-earth dualism caught on not just in Southern England, but in America. Reshaped in the hands of other ministers, theologians, and popularizers, his ideas and those of his Plymouth Brethren colleagues would in due time change the trajectory of American evangelicalism and the nation’s culture. The ideas presidents kicked around in the Oval Office can be traced back to his work.
Turning Worship into a Clown Show
Our God, our New Testament God, is a consuming fire and to be approached with awe and reverence, as the book of Hebrews teaches. And those incapable of acting in accordance with that have no place in the pastoral ministry. And the SBC is certainly not poorer for their departure.
Avoiding a Second Civil War
Two competing religions are struggling in a battle against each other for control of our nation’s numerous institutions such as the civil government, the military, education, and even the church. Whatever labels you use for the two sides of the conflict, either wokeism versus traditionalism, or Cultural Marxism versus Christianity, the clash between the two factions is heated and intense. We call them culture wars, but we need to be reminded that culture is downstream from religion.
How To Kill A Denomination In One Easy Move
If you want to kill your denomination in one easy move that move is to neglect General Assembly. Those who helped bring in the very things that caused you to send your ruling elders to GA in the first place (Revoice/Side-B, CRT, female line- authority, etc.) are themselves going to be at General Assembly and they are waiting to reengage at the very first indication that our denomination has again attained a false sense of security.
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