Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Ever since its inception in the second half of the 19th century, modern psychology has been a controversial subject. For example, One of the ongoing assertions that upsets many psychologists is the assertion that psychology is not a science. This upsets psychologists because they contend that psychology is a science. It's a study of human behavior, they say. And this is done through the scientific method. It includes the formulation of a question, the development of a hypothesis, predicting the logical consequences of the hypothesis, testing the hypothesis through examination or experimentation, collecting data, analyzing the results. It's the scientific method. But then there are those who say that psychology is not a science. One of the reasons for making this assertion is that the field of psychology is divided by disagreements about what the fundamental tenets of psychology actually are. In other words, there's not an agreed-upon paradigm for psychology. Those who work in the field of psychology don't even agree with one another about the framework and the theories that define psychology. Some believe in a perspective that is called behaviorism. Others believe in a perspective that's called cognitivism. And then there are those who believe in a psychodynamic perspective. And depending on how you count, there are three or four or five other competing perspectives on psychology. The fact that there is not an agreed-upon paradigm that defines how psychology works is evidence to many people that it's not a science. or in order for a field of study to be truly a science, the fundamental tenets of that field of study need to be defined in such a way that everybody agrees upon it. For example, physics is a science because it has an agreed-upon paradigm. Isaac Newton is credited with organizing a paradigm with laws that describe the behavior of matter in motion. Newton's paradigm functioned as an agreed-upon framework for physicists up until the time Einstein discovered relativity and quantum physics, which then is a paradigm shift into a new paradigm. But there's a paradigm, an agreed-upon one. Likewise, chemistry is a science because it has an agreed upon paradigm. It's called the periodic table. All chemists are in agreement concerning the atomic number, the electron configuration, and the chemical properties of all the different elements that are defined in a periodic table. But psychology does not have this type of an agreed upon paradigm. So this leads many people to say it's not a true science. And this is why you'll hear some people make the distinction or maintain the distinction between real sciences and pseudosciences, or the hard sciences and the soft sciences. And those who are strongly opposed to psychology being called a science will sometimes say that it's better classified as a philosophy. It's a collection of theories for trying to understand human behavior, they say, which means it deals more with philosophy than it does science. And then there are others still who would argue, and I believe quite persuasively, that psychology is best defined as a religion. After all, if there's one thing that the psychologists do agree upon, it's the tenets of humanism. Even though there are a variety of competing perspectives in psychology, the one thing that they all share is an evolutionary model of origins and a commitment to using only material causes to explain human behavior. This is why psychology is concerned with the brain, but not the mind. This is why psychology is concerned with the human will, but not the human soul. Psychology seeks to explain every human behavior according to biological processes and environmental stimuli. But it completely rules out spiritual and supernatural considerations. That's humanism. That is humanism, brothers and sisters. That is a religion. It's a religion where there is no God, and humans are the measure of all things. Now, Christians used to understand this about psychology. This is why we've, Christians, have historically rejected the notion that psychology has any meaningful answers to life's issues and the problems that we encounter as we go through life. There was a day when virtually every Christian understood that if you begin with error, then you will necessarily end with error. It's what computer programmers refer to as GEIGO, garbage in, garbage out. Bad inputs result in bad outputs. But over the past couple decades, a lot of Christians have been changing their attitude towards psychology. This is because the world has been persistently telling us that counseling is the domain of the professional who has a degree in psychology and who is licensed by the state to provide counseling services. And many Christians have believed this lie. We've heard it so many times that many of us have begun to believe it. But here's the question every Christian needs to ask himself. Where do we find the answers to life's problems and issues? Life on this earth definitely has its issues and problems. There's no question about that. So where do we find the answers to those issues and those problems? They're found in the Bible, right? They're found in the Bible. So why would a Christian think that anybody who tries to address those issues and problems by looking to humanist psychology is going to have the right answers? Why would a Christian think that anyone who ignores the Bible, or better put, anyone who rejects God and rejects his special revelation to man, why would we think that this person would have the right answers to life's issues and problems? If it's garbage in, garbage out, we have to then start with something that's meaningful. you would think that Christians would insist that the only people who are qualified to counsel are those who believe in God, who believe in the Bible, and who are able to competently apply the Bible to life's circumstances. Yet so many of us have been persuaded to believe that the psychologist who has a degree in secular humanism is the person who's best equipped to tell us how to deal with the problems and issues we experience in life. I think I know part of the reason why so many Christians have been deceived in this way. It's not a complete answer, it's a partial answer. For the past 150 years, psychology has been rigorously studying human behavior. And because God has created us as logical and rational beings, we've been created in his image, we all share many of the same behavioral characteristics. That is to say, one person tends to respond to a circumstance in the same way that another person would respond to that circumstance. Why? Because God created us according to a pattern of his likeness. He created us with characteristics that are universal to all humans. And so over the past 150 years, psychologists have been able to observe these shared patterns of behavior that we've been imbued with. The psychologists have diligently, very diligently, cataloged these observable behaviors in reference books. And detailed descriptions of human behavior have been committed to writing so that the psychologists can then draw upon those resources when counseling people. And I believe that the level of detail and specificity of the information that has been cataloged over the last 150 years has given psychology the appearance of having the answers to life's issues and problems. Because a psychologist can often describe our issues and problems with accuracy, it's assumed that the psychologist must also have the answers to those same issues and problems. For example, if you take your car to a mechanic and all you tell him is that there's a whining noise coming from the engine compartment, And without even looking at your car, the mechanic says, is the noise more noticeable when you're turning the steering wheel to the left or to the right? And is the noise loudest when you have the steering wheel turned all the way to the left or to the right? And when you answer yes to these questions, the mechanic is going to tell you that your problem is low power steering fluid, and that for $7 worth of fluid, you can fix your problem. You're going to have confidence in that mechanic because he was able to describe to you things about the behavior of your car that you had not even told him. And you're going to think to yourself, this guy has obviously seen this problem before, so I trust that he knows how to fix it. People make that same assumption with psychologists. Because a psychologist can offer or provide an accurate description of the problems that we experience, people experience commonly in life, the assumption is that the psychologist also has the solution to those problems. But that's an unwarranted assumption because describing a problem and resolving a problem are two very different things. Psychology can be really good at describing many of the issues that we face in life, but it's completely worthless for resolving those issues. Why? Because psychology rejects God. Psychology rejects the Bible. Psychology rejects the only source of truth that has the answers to life's problems. Now as Christians, we can acknowledge that psychology has done a good job at describing many of the observable aspects of human behavior, but we must reject its proposed solutions. It doesn't have the answers. And as I've said already, psychology is built upon an entirely different worldview. So it's a worldview that does not include God, it does not include his special revelation to mankind. So it's never going to be able to make good and profitable counsel or advice for us. It's never gonna provide righteous and truthful responses to life circumstances. And one of the circumstances that psychology has done a good job, in fact, a really good job at describing is the emotional desire that you have, that I have, that all people have to be heard. The emotional desire to be heard. One of our deepest longings, whether perhaps even deeper than many of us even realize, is a desire for other people to listen to what we say. Psychologists have correctly observed that there are some key moments in our lives when this longing to be heard is particularly evident. Not that it's, I mean, it's always there, but there are some key moments when it's particularly evident. When you're suffering, for example, you'll likely experience some level of comfort in knowing that somebody else has heard your cries and knows that you are suffering. When you're anxious, It helps to know that somebody else is aware of your distress. And when you're frustrated, you'll probably feel a little better after having described your frustrations to somebody who has taken the time to really and truly listen to you. And psychologists have understood this about people for a long time. And this is why they implement the echo effect when they counsel their clients. The echo effect is the act of mimicking or mirroring another person's words back to them. Okay, by expressing what you just heard somebody say, you demonstrate that you have heard and you understand what they're saying. And for example, the client complains to her psychologist, my husband is at work all day, every weekday. When he eventually comes home in the evening, he watches TV and then he goes to bed. And on the weekends, he spends that time with his friends. And there's hardly a time, any time, that he spends with me. And to implement the echo effect, the psychologist will reply, so your husband's time is mostly spent in ways that do not include you. During the few hours that he can include you, he does not. This makes you feel neglected. you feel like he doesn't prioritize his relationship with you above his relationship with the television and his relationship with his friends. To which the client enthusiastically says, exactly, you got it, you heard me. And because the client knows that she's been heard, she's going to feel a little better about her situation. Not that anything has changed, the problem hasn't been solved, but because there's a deep longing in each and every one of us to know that we have been heard. And so this client is going to experience some level of satisfaction in the fact that the psychologist listened to her and understood how she's feeling, and there's some other person in this world that understands her. And as a Christian, when you take the time to truly listen to another person, You demonstrate that you value that person enough to give him or her something special, something that is very important to him or her. That something is your love. It's your attention, it's your listening, but at the very root of it all, it's your love. Verse 19 of our sermon text reminds us that this type of careful listening is an important contribution that we make to our friendships. And it's insightful that James differentiates the activity of listening from the activity of speaking, because we might make the mistake of thinking that if we are engaged in conversation with one another, then we are listening to one another. But that's not always the case. Many people have conversations where they do a whole lot of talking and very little listening. To truly listen to another person can be an activity that's difficult to master because it means taking an intense interest in the person who's speaking. Let me repeat that. To truly listen can be an activity that's difficult to master because it means taking an intense interest in the person who is speaking. And notice that I did not say it's taking an intense interest in what the other person is speaking about. I said it's taking an intense interest in the person who is speaking. This is an important distinction because careful listening is an act of love. It's an act of love where the object of the love is the person who's doing the speaking and not the topic upon which that person is speaking about. Not the conversation, it's the person. And you might love talking about baseball. You might love talking about politics. You might love talking about snowboarding. You might love all sorts of topics of discussion. And when these discussions arise, you become attentive and you become a careful listener, but that's not the type of listening that's anchored in love for the other person. What I'm describing here as careful listening is that which takes an intense interest in the person who is speaking and listening to that person is an act of love, and it's, in fact, what it's doing, it's putting into practice, putting into application the attitude of love that's commanded to us in Philippians 2, verses three and four, which reads, that nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, that each esteem others better than himself." That each of you look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. When you truly listen to what another person is saying, the particular topic of discussion is secondary. The particular topic of discussion is secondary because you are placing the other person's interests ahead of your own. And when you carefully listen to that person, your actions are communicating to him, I esteem you. Therefore, I'm going to listen to what is important to you at this moment. Remember, friendship is a relationship where loving kindness is flowing back and forth between two people. Friendship is a relationship where loving kindness is flowing back and forth between two people. You contribute the type of love that makes friendships grow and flourish when you're slow to speak and quick to listen. I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a really good understanding of this point. If you know much about Bonhoeffer's life, you probably know that he established a place of Christian communal living in Germany. And Bonhoeffer had the desire to live in an exclusively Christian community, even before he was in Germany, back when he was still in London. Back then, he visited several Anglican communities, several monasteries. in England, and he wanted to become acquainted with their methods and their routines. He wanted to know what made them work and what their challenges were and how those challenges could be overcome. He wanted to know how to develop a successful communal living society. Then in 1935, Bonhoeffer took a teaching position at a seminary in Finkenwald, Germany, and that's where he established his own Christian community. All the members of the community were dedicated to what Bonhoeffer described as, and I quote, the pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount, and worship that's taken seriously, end quote. Those were the emphasis within this community. And this helped develop the community of Christians who lived there as people who were strongly dedicated to expressing brotherly love to one another. And Bonhoeffer's community only lasted for about two years. This is not because the community failed in some way, but this is because World War II was happening, and the Nazis forced them to close in 1937. Heinrich Himmler declared the commune to be illegal. And so he ordered the Gestapo to scatter the people throughout the provinces around Berlin. So they were disbanded by force. But Bonhoeffer would go on to write a book about the virtues of living in communal arrangement. That book is called Life Together. And if you read this book, you may not be fully convinced that living in a monastic sort of communal arrangement is the best option for you and your family. At least I wasn't. But I think you'll agree that Bonhoeffer has something important to say about how we show love to our friends and how we show love to our fellow Christians by carefully listening to them. Let me share two excerpts from his book. Bonhoeffer writes, So often, Christians think that their only service is always to have to offer something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Those who cannot listen long and patiently will always be talking past others, and finally, no longer will even notice it. Those who think their time is too precious to spend listening will never really have time for God and others but only for themselves and for their own words and plans. Now, Bonhoeffer makes two good contributions for our consideration here. First, he says that talking isn't the only way to offer yourself to other people. And while it's certainly true that a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver, right, that's true, we don't deny that, It's also true that sometimes the greatest service that you can offer to your friends is the service of listening to what they say. Listening. And people have a strong desire to be heard. We find it helpful, even therapeutic, to know that another person is esteeming us enough to actually put forth the effort required to listen. to understand, to know what we're expressing with our words and from our hearts. The second helpful contribution Bonhoeffer makes is that impatience causes people to not esteem others enough to actually put forth the effort to listen to them. This impatience causes people to talk past another person rather than taking an intense interest in that other person. Let me try to illustrate the point that Bonhoeffer's making here. Picture a young boy being tucked into bed by his mother at night. He looks up at his mother as he's lying there in bed. He has a worried look on his face and he says to his mother, I'm afraid of the dark. And his mother, who still has dirty dishes sitting on the kitchen sink, She just wants to be able to turn off the lights and have him go to bed so that she could get on to her dishes and then she too can go to bed and rest for the day. Yet here's her son, he's expressing his fear of the dark to her. So how can this mother show that she's heard what her son has said? How can she take an intense interest in her son right now? If she's impatient, if she wants to get to the dishes, she's going to say something like, don't be silly, there's nothing to be afraid of in here. And then she's going to turn off the light, close the door and go do her dishes. Now do you think that the boy is going to feel like his mother truly listened to him when he was expressing to her his fear? Of course not, no. But if the mother, took the time to say to her son, I understand the fear that you're experiencing because I had the same fear when I was a child. But then I came to realize that my safety doesn't depend upon my ability to see what's around me. Our loving and faithful God is who keeps us safe. And he's able to see even when the lights are off. So let's take a moment and let's pray together to our Lord that he will watch over you tonight and give you a special comfort that he is there. Those who cannot listen long and patiently will always be talking past others. When the mother told her child not to be silly because there's nothing to be afraid of, she was talking past her child. He didn't listen long and patiently to him. He didn't esteem him more importantly or more highly than the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. He didn't take an intense interest in him at that moment. And Bonhoeffer says that when people make a habit of being impatient and they're listening, then they end up in a place where they no longer even notice that they're always, always talking past people. This is alarming, or at least it should be alarming to us, because if you're not putting forth the intentional effort to listen long and patiently to your friends, then you might be in a place where you no longer notice it. And this impatience with your fellow Christians will inevitably lead to your impatience with God. In other words, if you're not putting forth the effort to listen to your fellow Christian, then what makes you think you're putting forth the effort to listen to God? Realize, just as you can be involved in conversation with your fellow Christians, but not truly be listening to what they're saying, you can be in conversation with God and not truly be listening to what He is saying as well. Bonhoeffer writes in the second excerpt, there is also a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. This impatient, there's that word again, inattentive listening really despises the other Christian and finally is only waiting to get a chance to speak and thus to get rid of the other. This sort of listening is no fulfillment of our task, the task to love each other. And it is certain that here, too, is our attitude toward other Christians. We simply see reflected our own relationship to God. I'm sure you've all experienced trying to carry on a conversation with a person who kept cutting you off in mid-sentence, thinking they knew what you were about to say. Proverbs 18.13 addresses that person. It says, he who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him. It is folly and shame to him. But if Bonhoeffer is correct, and I believe he is, then Christians are fully capable of displaying this type of folly and shame, not just when another human is talking, but when God is speaking as well. You can go through all the motions of conversation with God. You can be involved in daily devotions. You can be doing your Bible reading. You can be attending church and the activities and Bible studies. And you could be not truly listening to what God is saying during these activities. You're only listening with half an ear. You're presuming that you already know what God is going to say. For example, you might open up your Bible to a particular passage, and when you begin reading it, you say to yourself, oh yeah, I know this passage. I've read this before. I just heard a sermon on this, what, a year or two ago. And so you close your Bible and you stop reading it. Or maybe you feel a duty to actually read it, And so you continue reading it, you plow through the passage, but you don't really process the information in your head because you've already concluded at the beginning what you believe God has to say to you at the end. He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him. You need to remember that the word of God is living and powerful. It's sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of your soul and spirit. And the Bible is able to reveal your thoughts and the intents of your heart. This means the Bible is going to have different applications to you as you find yourself in different stages of life or different circumstances of life. Now, let me be very clear because I could be confused of what I just said. I'm not saying that the Bible has a different meaning for you at different stages of life. Okay? We need to reject the idea that the meaning of the Bible is subjective. We need to reject the idea that the meaning of the Bible is different depending on who is talking to or where you are in this world. That's what it means to you, this is what it means to me. We need to reject that. There's only one true meaning to every passage in the Bible, but there can be multiple applications to every passage in the Bible. And as the circumstances of your life change, you'll find that God speaks to you in way of application in new and different ways from the same Bible passages that you've been reading and studying for many years. But you're not going to experience that if you are impatient with God. You're not going to experience this maturing of your faith if you presume you already know what God is going to say. to do so would be displaying your folly and shame. And the point Bonhoeffer is making is that there's a correlation in the way you listen to your friends and the way you listen to God. And this is a valid correlation because listening is an act of love. And in 1 John 4, 20, it says that if you don't love your brother whom you have seen, you don't love God whom you have not seen. If you don't listen to your brother, you're not listening to God. If you don't love your brother, you're not loving God. It's in our best interest, therefore, to give serious contemplation, consideration, to whether we're slow to speak and quick to listen. It's in our best interest to give serious consideration to whether we're properly esteeming people, the people we converse with. And in consideration of this, we need to be mindful that we might be blind to our impatience. We might be blind to our talking past other people. We may have become so accustomed to our folly and shame of presuming that we know what other people are going to say that it doesn't even register with us anymore. So if you really want to know whether you're slow to speak and quick to listen, then the best thing that you can do is to ask God to reveal this to you. Don't trust your own judgment in this matter. You know what the Bible says about your heart. It's deceitfully wicked. You cannot trust it. It's deceitful above all things. You cannot know it. But the Lord searches the heart, the Lord tests the mind, So pray that if there is any sin in this area of your life, that God will reveal it to you. Pray Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there's any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Then, after having prayed this, look for God to answer this prayer as you inquire with one or two people that you know love you enough to speak difficult truth to you. That's how God often answers his prayer. Ask these people who know you and love you well enough to speak difficult truth to you, ask them, when I am in conversation with other people, Do I usually respond in a way that shows that I'm taking an intense interest in the person who's speaking? That I have truly heard what they just said to me? Or do I respond in a way that forces a conversation in a totally different direction? Do I frequently turn a conversation to be about myself rather than whatever the other person had been talking about? Do I frequently make the conversation about one of my favorite hobby horses Do I monopolize conversations? Do you see me bragging when I speak to people, bragging about myself, bragging about my accomplishments, bragging about my possessions, bragging about something? Or do you ever see me trying to one-up other people? Do I talk at people rather than talking with people? Do I ever interrupt people presuming that I already know what they're going to be saying? I'm fully convinced, brothers and sisters, that Bonhoeffer is correct when he says that some people are not able to see the bad conversation habits that they have formed. But I am also fully convinced that if you pray to God for Him to reveal your sins and weaknesses to you, He will do it. He will do it. And he'll likely do it through the counsel of somebody who loves you very deeply, and who has taken an intense interest in you, perhaps for many, many years. For those of you who are married, you know who that person is, right? The person is your spouse. Somebody said that listening is the art of closing one's mouth and opening one's ears and heart. And this person was making the same point that I've been trying to make through this sermon, which is the same point Dietrich Bonhoeffer was making in his book, Life Together. The point is this, listening is loving. Listening is putting the interests of your friend above your own. listening is taking an intense interest in the person who's speaking regardless of the topic that he's speaking about. Real friendships, and I stress real, real friendships are formed and nurtured when genuine Christian love flows back and forth between two people. There are fictitious and false and other forms of friendship that are not lasting. They are pseudo-friendships. We talk about real sciences and pseudo-sciences, we can talk about real friendships and pseudo-friendships. Real friendships are formed and nurtured when genuine Christian love goes back and forth between two people. And one of the most effective ways that you can deepen your friendships is to contribute the love of being a careful listener. And one of the most effective ways that you can weaken a friendship is to not be a careful listener. And so be slow to speak, brothers and sisters, and be quick to listen. Not only will it improve your relationship with other people, it will improve your relationship with God. Amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.