Introduction

The loss of active listening is the most common challenge the world is facing from family to big institutions and from elementary schools to universities while it builds trust, strong relationships and success. Judaism and Christianity confirm that promoting active listening prevents and resolves conflicts.

For the Greeks who lived in ancient Middle East, viewing, looking, perceiving with eyes was very important, ancient Greece was a culture of the eye; ancient Israel was a culture of the ear. The Greeks worshipped what they saw; Israel worshipped what they heard (Rebuck 2021). For a Jewish in the Bible, listening is the most important action. That why the Bible talks about circumcision of the heart because heart designs in the biblical anthropology, the center of human being.

Judaism culture of listening

In Hebrew the verb to listen שמע means to obey, to learn, to hear. In the Bible, Abraham, Moses, David, Prophet Samuel and others, showed their availability to listen and to hear. The name Samuel means in Hebrew “Schma El” listen to GOD. The only GOD of Israel is the GOD who reveled in hearing silence (1King 9:9-13). The confession “Shema Israel” is the highest commandment: Listen, O Israel the Lord is our GOD, the Lord alone, you must love the Lord your GOD with all your heart, your soul, and all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4). Shema means something like: “listen, concentrate give the word of GOD your most focused attention, strive to understand, engage all your faculties, intellectual and emotional, make His will your own. And for what He commands you to do is not irrational or arbitrary but for your welfare, the welfare of your people, and ultimately for the benefit of all humanity. Psychotherapists nowadays sometimes underline the active listening, and this is part of what is meant by Shema. In the Bible listening is a very huge subject! Because the supreme religious act in Judaism is to listen. Listening brings prosperity, blessing. To don’t listen brings malediction (Deuteronomy 11: 26). 

The human ear is the heart of human being

In recent years there has been an explosion of anthropological interest in the senses. Sound, listening and the sense of hearing have received particular attention in this ‘sensory turn’. A number of researchers have taken up the provocative way if rather vague project of trying to learn about social life by listening to it, re-thinking key anthropological ideas from an acoustic perspective. Part of the new enthusiasm for studies of auditory culture. In all over the world you see many people walking, working, studying, eating, and resting with head phones. Listening music, listening radio programs. Just to show how listening is important. Today we have audiology and hearing sciences. Today in political sciences, economic sciences, biomedical sciences they included in a listening course in their curriculums.

Coming in religions, “most religious beliefs and principles are primarily transmitted aurally and orally. The human ear is the heart of human being; this membrane which allows access to all that is beyond ourselves is therefore one of the most privileged inlets to God. Christianity is a religion of the word and a religion of mouth-to ear. In 1 Samuel 3 he replied “speak, for your servant is listening.”  Christianity is so deeply rooted in the aural that a very listening and response is so powerful, moving and critically important in God's self-disclosure (revelation) to us.

Listening anthropology is a vocation, not a job. It is something we are called to do, not something we are hired to do. I want to consider this in the context of five words: Listening is the obligation to be present, to listen, and to negotiate, to transcend, and to formulate the real problem and to find solution. An important part of our vocation is “listening to voices,” and to be able also to translate. We are translators. Listening is necessary in all activities of human being.

God is a good listener

As we saw, from the beginning of creation, in all over societies, listening is a very deep human being need. In our Bible, God and his prophets repeatedly exhort the people to remember and to talk about what you’ve seen and heard, tell those stories, write them down, sing about them, tell them to your own hearts, tell them to your children, tell them to the people, tell them to the nations... don't forget (Deuteronomy 6:4 -9).

But God is also a listener. Ex 2:24 (God heard their groaning, and He remembered his covenant...) surely that's a key point for our theology of listening. If anyone knows best, and doesn’t need to listen, it would be God. Now and then there are signs that he has heard enough already, that he’s disgusted and inclined to turn away, but what we mostly see is “The Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and rich in love.” He says: I’m here, I’m listening; I love to listen. If God is willing to humble himself to listen, well, it says something for us as well.

The New Testament records the same phrase from Jesus 14 times:  who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. When people told to JESUS that his mother and his brothers would like to see him, he replied that: “My mother and my brothers are those who listen GOD’s word (Luc8:21)”.

Having ears is to listen, and listening means perceiving, getting what it is that you are hearing. Many people have ears and don't hear, but that's pretty tragic and disappointing. We are supposed to hear and to listen. It is what our ears are for. “The nineteenth-century Danish religious philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that hearing, listening is the most spiritual of all our senses” (McCarthy 2015).

But most people are very self-centered. Tell them a story from your life and they will interrupt you to tell you a similar story from their life that you don't have the least interest in. Listen to them or ask them questions to lead on their story telling and most people will think you are very intelligent and interesting.

A human being need to be listened, that why there is a need for developing capacities of listening.

In anthropology of work, everything relating to human being which does not contain voices is missed. If it does not contain the authentic voices of the subjects of investigation, throw it aside, because it does not have lasting value. Anthropology is a paying attention to the voices of those among whom we live and study. By listening carefully to others’ voices and by trying to give voice to these voices, we act to widen the horizons of human conviviality (Fernandez 2020). Good listening is probably the most important skill to improve and Lloyd Steffen states that the ability to listen depends not in the first place on any particular skill or technique, but on a fundamental respect for one’s partner in conversation (Steffen 1990). If we listened to one another we should be inviting one another into new forms of relationship based on openness and respect.

Listening for God is finally like trying to listen to one’s own self, and that is not an easy task. Listening to God requires the listening to the self that makes up any moment of confession and self-examination. Listening for God requires that we learn to be critical of ourselves in perceiving with eyes, ears, and understand with heart for being healed (Matt. 13:15). If you are able to listen GOD, you are also able to listen a human being. As Nóirín Ní Riain (2011) states, the active and deep listening is essential in nowadays in medicine of healing. Authentic listening is able to break through the rigid borders that imprison fundamentalist thinking.

Conclusion

We should give ourselves to active listening for seeking to understand more than giving our opinion.  Listen to this indicting verse: "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion" (Proverbs 18:2).

While James 1:19 advises, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” As Christians, if we exercise the discipline of listening carefully in the prayer life and as a leader, the results will also be remarkable in all domains involved in. He who has ears, let him hear, the Greek stoic^[1] philosopher Epictetus says that the nature has given to man one tongue, but two ears so that he may hear from others twice as much as he speaks.

Listening is a way of healing. It is true that when your mouth is open, your ears are closed.

Bibliography

1. Fernandez, W. James (2020): Anthropology as a Vocation: Listening to Voices, Routledge, New York.

2. Lloyd Steffen, Lloyd (1990): The listening point, in the Christian Century, Christian Century Foundation November 21-28, 1990 pp.1087-1088.,

3. McCarthy, A. Vincent (2015): A. McCarthy: Kierkegaard as psychologist, Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois.

4. Nóirín Ní Riain (2011): Towards a Theology of listening, Columba Press.

5. Patrick D. Miller; Jerome F. D. Creach; Jerry Clinton McCann Jr. et al. (1990): Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, John Knox Press, Kentucky.

6. Perdue, Leo G. (1989): Interpretation Proverbs, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, John Knox Press, Kentucky., 1989

7. Rebuck, Anthony (2021): A Doctor's Torah Thoughts, Writers Republic.

8. Waltke Bruce K. (2004): The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 1-15. Michigan, 2004.Grand rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, UK.