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“If there’s magic in the world, it’s the understanding of something that someone’s trying to share.” - from Before Sunrise (via S. Henderson) I’ve completed two parts of the response I’m drafting to Kate Bolick’s article on marriage and singleness from the November issue of the Atlantic, and I have one post yet to write.  Faced with a shortage of time before and during the holidays, I decided to take a breather in this post to crank out a little meta-response (you know, a self-styled response about my response, and a response about the response to my response), and leave the true “third part” of my response to Kate’s piece until after the New Year. I began Part I of my response by making the case that Christians are notoriously bad at listening to thoughtful non-Christian commentary, and that I regard this as a bit of an embarrassment.  One reader of this weblog recently offered up a bit of criticism, agreeing that Christians are "notoriously bad at listening to what people like Ms. Bolick have to say about issues like gender, marriage, etc.," but defending Christians’ distaste for listening in two ways:

“1) We know we can’t allow them to change our views. (Frankly, you’re right – I’m not interested in anything they have to say about marriage and gender roles.) I have settled that for myself without their help. 2) We know they don’t want a response from us. Just as you accuse Christians of doing, these people don’t think that we could possibly have anything to add to the conversation. They don’t ask us to join in a conversation. They just want to tell us we’re wrong.”

I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to “Traditional Mom” for sharing exactly what she thinks.  I’ve been inviting readers to leave comments, and I’m grateful for her contribution. Even if this comment represents a minority view, she’s not the only one to hold it, and it provides a great chance to continue the conversation.

* * *

If you do a little spelunking to unearth Christianity’s prime elements, right next to the Scriptures, and the ethics of love, charity and hospitality, you’ll recognize a few nearly forgotten items: evangelism and apologetics.  Figuring out how to articulate and give away what we’ve seen, received and understood has always been at the heart of the Christian faith.  This is a truth so basic and axiomatic that it barely bears mentioning.  In fact, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning at all, except that the term evangelism has fallen so far out of favor that it’s met with considerable revulsion by many both inside and outside the church. A lot has been written addressing the shortcomings of the popular evangelistic techniques of the last 20 years, so I’ll limit myself to a succinct critique.  Evangelism is distasteful and ineffective for everyone involved when it consists of one person compelling another person to listen to speech that is not native to either of them.  This is why I personally found the concept so off-putting for so many years.  I could never bring myself to take an account of the gospel written by someone else and compel a stranger into conversation about it.  The speech would be an awkward fit for me, would seem like a foreign language to the other person, and it would become immediately apparent to both of us that we’d each rather be doing something different. Like so many things in life, evangelism is a conversation, and all conversations begin with the ability to hear, and the capacity to speak.  You simply cannot evangelize if you cannot hear, because you won’t know how to articulate what you want to say.  Just ask any Bible translator or missionary or church planter: comprehending the language of the people group you wish to reach is a prerequisite to sharing with them. Contrary to popular belief, we cannot complete the Great Commission by speaking the Gospel in our native tongue slowly and loudly enough. Suppose you’re on Jim Elliot’s team when he arrives in Ecuador in 1955 to evangelize the Waodani people. You’re hiding in the bush with Jim, when you spy a tribe of Waodani speaking to one another in Waodanicean. You look at Jim, and Jim looks at you, and then he whispers anxiously, "Try not to listen to what they’re saying! We can’t allow them to change our views!" And you pause for a moment to survey the scene and then whisper back, "Yeah, I don’t think they want to hear from us. I can tell by the look on that warrior over there that he doesn’t want to join us in a conversation, he just wants to tell us we’re wrong."  Of course, Jim Elliot’s actual approach would be the same as any missionary: start sharing by learning the language.  People like Jim Elliot and me are obsessed with listening, because we have so much to say. I suppose that once you compare yourself to Jim Elliot, there’s no hiding it any longer: I’m writing this weblog to evangelize.  Perhaps that is reassuring to some of you (Traditional Mom, I’m looking at you!  (I hope.)).  But for other readers, you no doubt see in this confession all you need to write me off completely.  But wait!  Our culture is brimming with evangelists.  Don’t hate just because I’m candid about it. You see, as much as I have in common with a missionary like Jim Elliot, I have in common with Mad Men.  (Well, minus the alcoholism, sex-crazed workaholism, and neglectful parenting, that is.)  You see, virtually every realm of modern life is saturated with evangelism.  We’re daily blitzed with sales pitches from ad campaigns, political parties, candidates, television personalities, and bloggers!  From the best restaurants to eat at, to the best ideologies, to the best cars, to the best of youtube, the best of the web, the best of the best of the best.  Setting aside people who sell things for no purpose other than to profit, and the occasional person who will, in the words of Tommy Boy,  “take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed,” you’re left with the only real reason to evangelize: when you’ve found something too good not to share. Even if you somehow avoided ever consuming advertising---you never watch TV, you never look at a billboard or subway ad on your commute, and you use a web browser with built in ad-blocker, as long as you have friends, you’ll never escape being evangelized.  You see, friends are really the worst.  They’ll come after you with so much charm and personal appeal that they’re nearly impossible to resist.  Friends are like little toxic orbs of evangelising.  They always have political opinions they have to share.  And they’ve always read something that we have to read too.  They always know someone that they really want to set us up on a date with.  They’ll never stop trying to persuade us that Radiohead is the greatest band of our day, and why cancelling Community was the worst decision NBC has made in 5 years.  They’ll explain what type of electronics we should be purchasing, and all the great ways they’ve found to use them and make their lives better.  Friends are a never ending stream of restaurant picks, bargain shopping tips, and your neighborhood’s best kept secrets.  This is what I am.  And if you’re honest, it’s probably what you are too. Which brings me back to listening.  Three weeks ago, I became an early adopter of an iPhone 4---my first ever Apple purchase.  (I use the term “early adopter” loosely.)  In the years leading up to this event, I had countless friends eager to evangelise me on the merits of Apple design and technology.  But you know which friends were the most convincing?  The ones who listened to me rant and rave about my priorities---about the way I wanted technology to serve me, and not the other way around.  About my concerns about the costs of a data plan.  About my obsession with efficiency and my suspicion of trends.  About my doubts that I’d find much of use in the app store, and that the whole “intuitive user interface” bit was a hoax.  The friends who heard me out, who took the time to appreciate my own little quirks and oddities before explaining why I was wrong made for the very best salespeople.  Those who didn’t take the time to hear me out, and who just prattled endlessly about the glories of what I saw as a glorified PDA, I regarded as brainwashed and ignored (or teased, to that effect). But what if what you’re selling isn’t just an iPhone or a new record, but is something far more important---like insight on the best way to live, or wisdom on relationships, or good news about how to harness human appetites for enjoyable but potentially destructive things.  The more important what you have to sell, the more critical listening becomes.  Being ignored or disregarded is sad when you’re selling Girl Scout cookies; it’s nothing short of tragic when what you have to share is unimaginably important.  This is why church planters furiously study the cultures of the people they want to reach.  They look for pockets where the grace of God has been revealed, and then attempt to contextualize those pockets in light of the gospel.  But no matter whether you’re evangelizing for Jesus Christ or Proctor & Gamble, the process remains the same.  You start by listening, and trying to discern the language and mindset of your intended audience.  You seek to discern their convictions, concerns, needs and conclusions.  And then, in light of all that, you figure out how to say what you have to say.  The only difference between selling the Gospel and a bar of soap is how active a role is played by the Spirit of God One final point.  Even if you agree that listening is an important first step of evangelism, it can be difficult to put into practice.  A good friend of mine read Kate’s article, and commented that he was exhausted by reading it.  To him, it read “like one long Sex in the City episode, as if it were written by the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love.”  He found it “even more frustrating that its banal sensibilities are so popular and celebrated."  I think his comment helpfully illustrates how everyone can hear and respond to different things.  We all speak different languages.  My friend, for instance, is remarkably gifted at listening to film and theater, and has enormously insightful things to say in response to what he hears.  The world consists of a diversity peoples, many of which I couldn’t hope to understand or speak to, no matter what effort I put forth. Whom have you heard lately?  You should probably try to engage them in conversation.  I’m sure you have some evangelising to do.

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