Recently I was sitting in a meeting, working hard not to squirm in my seat. The views being expressed felt harsh and personal. The words pouring out of a new friend’s mouth seemed like an attack, and I wanted to defend. To explain. To argue.

But I didn’t do any of those things, because I’m working hard to live out our lessons about listening Those lessons include:

• Only Scripture is true. Human opinions are just opinions.
• To gain the rewards of listening, we have to lose our “one right way” of thinking.
• Elevating our own opinions to truth shuts down dialogue. Listening with the fruits of the Spirit builds dialogue.
• Listening = Love.

Instead of attacking, defending, explaining, or arguing, I listened without speaking. I didn’t agree with every word my friend spoke, but I learned some new things. I absorbed an experience different than my own. I built the relationship in a way that will allow me to speak my perspective at the right time.

Putting myself in positions where I feel the pinch of unease isn’t easy, but it’s good. The echo chamber that I lived in for years wasn’t helpful at all. It kept me comfortable but unchanged.

What’s an echo chamber?

We’ve created an echo chamber when we surround ourselves with voices who echo back our own ideas, thoughts, values, experiences and perspectives.

As humans, we’re all looking for those who are like us and a place to belong. The way we most often do that is to form an echo chamber which is a natural default but not the best way to learn and grow. We create echo chambers all the time by choosing TV news that supports what we already think, by following people on social media that post what what we already agree with, and by choosing friends who look how we look and live how we live.

There’s a comfort level to all that sameness, but it keeps us from understanding another’s perspective. It keeps us from learning and growing. It even keeps us from being solution-bearers since we never expose ourselves to two sides of a problem.

So I’ve been working to bust up my echo chamber.

How do you bust up an echo chamber? 

The only way to bust up our echo chambers is to be intentional. We have to seek out voices and perspectives different from our own, make friends with those who move outside our natural communities, and listen when we’d rather argue.

Because God has been putting racial reconciliation on my heart, I’ve taken steps to specifically listen and learn about that issue. Here are some of the steps I’ve taken to bust up my echo chamber:

• I’ve started following women of color in social media. A few of my favorites are Chrystal Evans Hurst, Jackie Hill Perry and Arielle Estoria.
• I joined a Bible study in a church that’s historically a black church. Not only do a receive great teaching every week, but I’m making new friends who have voices that I care about.
• I’m listening to podcasts with perspectives that challenge my own. Two of my favorites are The TED Radio Hour and Lavar Burton Reads. (The second I love, love, love. There’s no better way to step into someone else shoes than by listening to a story.)
• I’ve attended a conference that included both black and white leaders. So powerful to hear many perspectives!

What is God moving your heart to learn about? What issue do you feel led to eventually speak into? Find and follow people who speak into all sides of that issue.

How do you cling to the Truth in the process?

Although I’m asking you to join me in listening to voices out there that don’t echo your own, I’m NOT asking you to embrace all those voices say. That’s not at all the point of busting up your echo chamber.

Instead, at the end of this series on listening, I return to the beginning. Here’s the sub-set process within our listening:

Listen to God (first and always first) –> Listen to others –> Listen to God (last and always last)

All that we hear must be compared with Scripture, the only reliable Truth. We must be like the people that Luke commended in the book of Acts, “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11)

Let’s read like Bereans, listen like Bereans, and learn like Bereans. That doesn’t mean that we only consider what’s true, but it does mean that we only absorb what’s True according to Scripture.

With the rest of the information, we learn how to develop a strong voice that’s under-girded by a tender heart. When it’s time, we’re ready to speak.

Please share what you’ve learned in this series about listening. What’s the issue God is putting on your heart? Who do you recommend that I follow as I bust up my echo chamber?

This is the last week in the “Listen” series, but hang tight with me! Next week I have an exciting announcement, and then we’ll roll on in our process to:

Listen –> Feel –> Do –> Speak

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The last in our series of guest posts about listening comes from Lori Stanley Roeleveld, and it packs a truth-punch! In this excerpt from her new book The Art of Hard Conversations, Lori shows us the key when it’s time to move from listening to speaking in hard situations. Make sure to read to the end for a chance to win a copy of this helpful book!s

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I was surprised when Carly invited me to lunch.

Our church had been experiencing a conflict that had divided many. Carly and I had had numerous hard conversations about her attitude. Our last conversation had been particularly adversarial, so I was nervous that our meeting might be a vengeful ambush.

Carly arrived after I did, and once we ordered, she didn’t keep me in suspense. “I need your help and your prayers. My doctor called me to discuss my most recent test results, and I don’t want to face it alone. Can you come along?”

I was taken aback. “Of course. Still, I’m surprised you’re asking me.”

“Why?” she said, leaning back in the booth.

“Well, our last few exchanges haven’t been the most comfortable,” I replied.

She nodded. “In fact, I hated those conversations. But through everything, one thing that’s always been clear is that you love me. It takes a huge commitment to love to stick with someone through talks like that. Other people probably have thought those things and just given up on me or walked away. I’ll take the tough talks as long as there’s the love.”

Love is a multidimensional quality. It’s both a noun, representing a feeling, and a verb, representing actions that put others first.

In John 21, after Jesus has risen from the dead, He appears to some of the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. In verses 15–19, over breakfast, Jesus asks Peter three times about his love for Him. Peter answers three times that He does, indeed, love Jesus. Jesus’s response to each affirmative answer is to call Peter to action—feeding Jesus’s sheep—in demonstration of this love.

To say that we love others is to say we’re willing to risk our own discomfort to speak hard things to them.

To say that we love Jesus is to say we are ready to obey Him by living and speaking the truth. To say that we love Jesus is to say we are willing to reflect Him by loving and serving others. To say that we love others is to say we’re willing to risk our own discomfort to speak hard things to them.

Love is a feeling that leads to action.

When we prepare for any hard conversation, we must ask ourselves questions about love. Do I love this person, and if not, what am I going to do about that? Am I being loving to speak this truth in this way, at this time, to this person?

Some believers falsely assume that to be loving means to stay silent about truth or to compromise it in some way. Others are so afraid that loving feelings will lead to a softening of truth, they harden their hearts toward others and eschew mercy. This is dangerous thinking—both for the church of Jesus Christ and ultimately for the world.

The world (meaning people who don’t follow Jesus) has absconded with love, replacing God’s idea of love with a facsimile that many buy as the real thing. And not just the world. Some parts of the body of Christ believe that to be loving, biblical truth must be muted or modified.

Not so. Jesus walked on Earth living out perfect love while delivering perfect truth. It is possible. It’s not possible without Jesus, but it’s possible. Love and truth can occupy the same space, just as surely as Christ was fully human and fully God.

I’m aware that these two words frustrate, frighten, or trigger a wound reflex in some people. We’ve heard this phrase before, perhaps tossed around the church like a beach ball (or a dodge ball).

“I’m just speaking the truth in love, is all.”

“Well, don’t you know you have to speak truth in love?”

Intended for useful instruction, this power-filled phrase from Ephesians 4 is too often snapped from its context like a tree branch and used to club innocent passersby in Jesus’s name. The misguided speaker is often leaning heavily toward a personal interpretation of truth, while offering only a passing nod at anything others might recognize as love.

Inhale. Exhale. It’s tempting to edit from Scripture any passage that’s been misused, but this would be detrimental (not to mention heretical). Agreed, there has been a shameful amount of bullying that’s occurred in Jesus’s name. This speaking the truth in love concept has too often been the last word spiritually bludgeoned victims hear just before they hit the mat.

The worse thing we can do, though—worse than lancing the wounds—is to allow the bullies and abusers the last word on God’s Word. It will challenge some of us to revisit “speaking the truth in love,” but these are our Father’s Words. We must reclaim them from the bullies.

Of course, we can fairly represent love and truth simultaneously. Parents do it with children every day. Spouses do it. Church leaders, doctors, friends, and others all speak truth and communicate love, sometimes in the same breath.

Love is our high calling. The highest. We need to be trained and transformed by love, so that love is our first language, our initial reflex, and our emotional default setting. We need to foster loving hearts, if we want that love to influence our words.

(Excerpted from The Art of Hard Conversations, Lori Stanley Roeleveld, February 2019 by permission Kregel Publications)

Giveaway: To enter to win The Art of Hard Conversations, leave a comment telling about someone who has spoken the truth to you in love OR just say “Love covers a multitude of sins!”

 

Lori Stanley Roeleveld is an author, speaker, and disturber of hobbits who enjoys making comfortable Christians late for dinner. She’s authored four encouraging, unsettling books. Her latest release is The Art of Hard Conversations: Biblical Tools for the Tough Talks that Matter. She speaks her mind at www.loriroeleveld.com.

 

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