Monday, March 23, 2015

Not A Good Listener: Hearing But Not Processing

I'm not a good listener! Being hearing impaired with tinnitus, it reduces my hearing level 60% or so. However, I have a major problem in addition to that: When people are speaking intelligent thoughts I am busy processing what I hear and my cognitive activity interferes with new transmissions. I'm a poor listener because I analyze what the speaker is saying and get caught up in the trappings of my own mind!

Likewise, when people are merely chatting for fellowship on non-value added things, my mind is off in some dusty filing system pulling out things I've read which I deem more important to share with the people I'm with. This is rude and I endeavor to leave dusty things filed away! For instance, if someone mentions "surgery" in a conversation, my mind automatically goes back to the first abdominal surgery performed by Ephraim McDowell in Green County, Kentucky in 1809. When I do that, I miss the next topic of conversation and people think "He didn't hear me!". I didn't hear because I failed to listen. I was caught up in thought.

This is a good thing and a bad thing. I'm a minor league "Walter Mitty" and that's bad. However, the good things about thinking deeply about what one hears is that the conversation has meaning, and if both parties are thinking and sharing, both can readily learn from each other!
Mark 4:9 "And he (Jesus) said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
When speaking in parables Jesus said this often! Parables are life events that could happen and Jesus use them to make a spiritual or moral point. People listened to parables and heard the words, but they failed to draw the parallel Jesus was making. They were not getting any spiritual lessons from the short story being told. Therefore, what Jesus meant was "You have ears that hear, but you fail to consider what you're hearing!"

Shallow people can hear everything, but still fail to put the puzzle together because they are lackadaisical thinkers. One of my own favorite sayings is "Words mean things!" That's why words are spoken. Most people are eager hearers, but lazy thinkers. "Watter's World" on FOXNEWS is an example of these type of people! The people he interviews surely heard, maybe many times, current events or history. However, they never thought about what they heard! Why? Likely they didn't care and it failed to register because their minds were occupied on other things. Most of the time it's recreation and entertainment which fills the void where learning should be!

Often people who saturate their thoughts with entertainment fail to heed much of significance. When I see people with headphones on while running, relaxing, driving or whatever; I think: "Give your mind a break! Think on things of importance!"

Growing up working on a farm, I heard one thing most of the day: the roar of a tractor engine! That's wasn't a pleasant sound so I filled it with wonder! "I wonder why I'm here." "I wonder how God created the universe" and my most profound thought as a teenage "How far does nothing go out there beyond the cosmos?" I want to know these things! I care little for what others think, but cherish what God says about things. I seek truth. Scientists seek truth as well, but in seeking truth, they rule our Truth. By slighting God, most scientific thought will never paint an accurate picture because God is a big part of the picture!

This is rambling and I know it! However all my rambling leads to a point: When reading scripture, one must do more than mentally hear the words, but let the mind cogitate on the thought behind the words before moving on. Specifically, when reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament, continually ask yourself this question: "What has this got to do with Jesus?' It has everything to do with Jesus, and that thought process supplies the clues to answering what is "The Mystery of God"!


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