call each other into being and be the instrument of God's love in human
relations must pay attention to each other. It is difficult to speak if
we do not have the listener's attention; it is difficult to listen if we
do not have the speaker's attention. Absence of mutual attention breaks
down communication. Sermons may not have the attention of the
congregation because the preacher's attention is fixed only on the
sermon as a production, or on himself as a performer, and not on the
congregation that he is now addressing, and whose response is necessary
if his sermon, as communication, is to be completed. Likewise, a child
may not hear the parent because the parent is not really paying
attention to the child. We hear ourselves saying, "Look here, you pay
attention to me." We say it in desperation because we know that our
angry command will not accomplish the desired result. The inattention
that we receive from one another discourages us personally and blocks
the possibility of the dialogue that might reunite us.
How can we secure the attention of others? The answer is simple: by
being attentive. As a teacher I have found that if I am really attentive
to my pupils, they pay attention to me. But if I am just doing a job and
not really concerned about them, they do not hear me because I am not
hearing them. If we want attention we must be attentive. If we want love
we must love. If we want anything we must give it. This is a Christian
principle. We cannot demand something and get it. Attention, then, is a
gift that we give one another. We give the gift of attention and receive
it in return. We have no automatic right to it, nor does anyone.
Attentiveness is something that can be learned. We learn by having eyes
that see and ears that hear. Eyes, of course, are made for seeing and
ears for hearing, but we can learn also to hear with our eyes and see
with our ears. When I am seeking to understand another, for example, I
find that what I see in his face and manner helps me to understand what
he is saying; and, likewise, attentive hearing helps me to understand
what he is also revealing in his face and manner. We pay attention by
watching the eyes, facial expressions, and behavior of people, by
listening for the question behind the question and for the meaning
behind the meaning, remembering that there is tremendous content behind
what is said and shown. If we would be servants of love, we must have
ears that really hear and eyes that really see; and, like our Lord, hear
and see deeply in order that the truth which men are really seeking may
be found. Such hearing and seeing was the gift of Christ to men, and
should therefore be the gift of Christians to men.
It follows, then, that the good teacher is one who, participating in a
relationship with our Master Teacher, can accept any question that a
person may bring, knowing that if he stays with it, he will be led, step
by step, to that person's real concern. When the teacher gives that kind
of attention, the students are more apt to respond relevantly, which is
their attention to the teacher. Then the teacher has the wonderful
experience of mutual attention in which meaningful communication has
taken place. What I have said about teaching and the relationship
between teacher and pupil is true of all relationships. The reward for
the gift of attention is that others will respond with clues in the form
of questions or comments that will enable us to meet them at the point
of the meaning of their life. Not only does this kind of listening
provide a basis for a highly significant curriculum for teaching, as we
saw earlier, but also a basis for true human community and
communication. Our self-centeredness, however, gives us a natural pull
away from attentiveness. But the Spirit of Christ Who, in drawing us to
Him, draws us to one another, will make mutual attentiveness possible so
that two-way communication will become a reality for us.
One current objection to this kind of mutual attentiveness travels under
two guises: one is the possibility of being offensively nosy and
intrusive; the other is the fear of really violating the privacy of
other people. Certainly, privacy should be respected, and we should not
force ourselves upon others, but attentiveness is not intrusiveness.
Every human being wants to be known and to know as a person, and in ways
that are both conscious and unconscious. We seek others that we may be
known and may know. Attentiveness is really alertness to the lonely cry
of man, and respects rather than violates the individual's separateness
and sanctity.
_Mutual Respect_
Mutual respect is also a necessary quality in human relations. Respect
for oneself and for others is not as common as one might expect. We find
self-concern and some concern for others, but not respect. Respect for
others is hard to maintain if one does not respect oneself, and it is
appalling to realize what low estimates many people have of themselves.
Although they may disguise from themselves and others their despair
about themselves in many ingenious ways, lack of self-respect
nevertheless is characteristic of many people's self-image. Their view
of themselves results largely from their experiences in relationship,
many of which we have already discussed. We may try to prevent the
development of negative attitudes and feelings toward ourselves and our
children, but no matter how loving we try to be, we shall inevitably
cause some injury, distortion, and deprivation to the maturing person.
What, then, is the answer to this human problem? If the effect of
growing up is to produce in us misgivings about ourselves and others,
how can we acquire the self-respect and respect for others which is
necessary for those who would truly serve God and man? Since mutual
respect is a necessary condition for creative human relations, it is
necessary that the vicious circle of non-respect be broken by someone.
It is at this point that our participation in the re-creating life of
God in Christ, which is made possible by the presence and work of His
Spirit in us, makes a decisive difference in our self-estimate.
The Incarnation is the affirmation of God's faith in His creation.
Christ is an expression of God's faith in man and what He is able to do
through man. The principle of mutuality, which we have been affirming in
our present discussion, is true not only for the relation between man
and man, but between man and God as well. For the love of God in Christ
affirms our value as persons in His desire to work through the people
who will respond to His love, and shows His respect for what they can
do. God's love and respect for men was expressed through the person of
Jesus and continues to be expressed through persons in each generation.
His people, the servants of His Spirit, are the ones who will break the
vicious circle of mutual non-respect, and give the gift of mutual
respect.
We can respect ourselves, therefore, because God shows His respect for
us by loving and working through us. When we have a great task to do
that calls for the courage and heroism of love, we can take a chance and
set ourselves to the task because our faith in God makes it possible to
have faith in ourselves and in those whom we would love. When we let our
misgivings deter us so that we turn away from the challenges of love, we
not only repudiate ourselves, but also turn our backs on God's affirming
judgment of us.
Mutual respect has some identifiable characteristics. First, we must
respect one another as autonomous, deciding persons. We cannot make our
children and others do what we may think they ought to do. We can only
meet them with whatever resources we have, and out of respect for their
own power of decision and action leave them free to make their response.
Then, when they have made it, we must respect it even though they may
not be doing what we want them to do or doing it in the way we think
best. Our decisions and way of life will not work for others.
We must also respect one another's dependence. But respect for others'
dependence should not increase it; that is, we should try to meet their
need, but not exploit it. Some years ago I was invited to lead a clergy
conference on the subject of pastoral counseling. During the opening
dinner before the beginning of the sessions, I sat next to a minister
who tried to impress me with how much he knew about pastoral counseling.
Among other things, he said, "You know, it's a wonderful thing to stand
up before my congregation on Sunday morning and be able to count the
increasing number of people who depend upon me for my pastoral care."
The temptation to exploit human need is insidious, and we have all
succumbed to it many times and in many ways. That pastor might better
have rejoiced in those of his congregation who, in spite of their
dependence and need, were able to use his help in their own independent
way and thus grow stronger and more resourceful. Likewise, we may
minister to the needs of our children and accept their dependence in
ways that demonstrate our respect for them and our expectation that they
will become more responsible.
Mutual respect also calls for respect of others who must answer for
their own lives. While it is true that we are dependent upon God and His
love for us, our response as individuals is a necessary complement to
what He has done. The source of our life and of our redemption is in
God, but we have to respond, and our responsible action makes complete
what God has done for us. Therefore, we respect ourselves as having
within ourselves the power of answer for our own lives. Mutual respect
for one another as responsible beings increases our self-respect, and,
conversely, our growing self-respect increases the respect we have for
others.
_Mutual Trust_
Mutual trust is a third necessary quality in human life. As we saw
earlier, nothing can happen in any relationship where there is not
trust, and yet, lack of trust is everywhere prevalent. The great
question is: How can we trust when we have such strong feelings of
mistrust not only of persons, but also of the process of life? I have
often had these misgivings as a teacher when, beginning with new
students, I wondered how we could go through the crises of learning
again. Where would I find the strength and courage for the challenges?
Would they respond to their opportunities and resources? Parents have
the same questions when they think of their children and wonder if,
after all the years of care, they will turn out all right. Sometimes we
become overwhelmed at the sheer weight and endlessness of our
responsibilities, and in those moments we become profoundly
discouraged. The need of love is desperate, and we feel wholly unequal
to meeting that need. How wonderful it would be if we could have more
confidence in ourselves and in others, and likewise in the processes of
life to which we must commit ourselves. The answer to this longing is in
the old, but ever new, affirmation that those who have faith in God can
have faith in man and in the relationships of life.
As we read Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, we may notice that he
seems to have been more confident of them than they were of themselves.
Yet, his confidence in them was not so much in them as it was in the
Holy Spirit. Because of the Spirit, he had reason to have confidence in
what the Spirit would do among, in, and through them. Along this same
line, a teacher made the following comment about his experience in one
of his classes: "On one occasion I was suffering from some agenda
anxieties, afraid that the members of the class, in the course of their
discussion, would not arrive at some important and necessary insights. I
was tempted to make sure that they saw certain things in the subject
that I felt they ought to see, but fortunately I was restrained from
interfering. Instead, I had an exciting morning hearing all the things
that I wanted to say said by them. It was a great experience! This
illustrates how important it is for us to keep ourselves from meddling,
and to have confidence in the Spirit. Then the truth appears in the
midst of us much more powerfully than if we handed it out, because when
it appears out of the midst, it comes with authority, it comes with
depth, it is memorable. The truth that comes to us in this way makes us
free. The moral is obvious: Let us trust what God is trying to
accomplish in us, and therefore trust one another."
To trust in the Spirit's working through dialogue does not mean that we
shall be successful in all our endeavors. People's response to being
trusted is not dependable or consistent. Man's response to God's trust,
expressed in the life of Christ, produced the crucifixion. We all have
had the experience of having our trust in others betrayed. This tempts
us to become bitter, to lose faith in man, and to lose faith in God. But
these responses are not a contradiction of trust; they are a part of the
curriculum of trust. Trust, if it is to do its full work, must include
mistrust, and faith must include doubt. I am helped to accept this
insight because of the awareness of the doubt that is so much a part of
my own faith which God accepts as a part of me and which gives my faith
something to do. After all, faith is for doubt, courage is for anxiety,
love is for hate. Instead of resenting hate, anxiety, doubt, and
mistrust, we should accept them as a part of life.
We are called by the divine love to be lovers, called by God to be His
servants, called by the Saving Person to be His person in the realm and
the relationship of the personal. We are precious and important to one
another and to God. We have a responsibility for others that must be met
by our first being responsible for what we are in ourselves, the
instrument for the revelation, in personal terms, of the power of love.
It is imperative, therefore, that if we are to love others as we love
God, we must love ourselves as being infinitely precious to God and
ourselves, and indispensable because we have responded to a means of
salvation for one another.
VI
LOVE IN ACTION
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us:
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."--_1 John 3:16_
We come now to the climax of our study. Love must lay down its life;
that is, it must give itself. The question then is: What is the mode and
place of its self-giving? Under this heading I want to consider the
nature of communication, evaluate the church as an agent of
communication, and dwell on the implications of our study for church
unity.
_The Importance of Communication_
Communication is essential to the expression of love and indeed to life
itself. Where there is love, there must be communication, because love
can never be passive and inactive. Love inevitably expresses itself and
moves out toward others. When communication breaks down, love is blocked
and its energy will turn to resentment and hostility. One of the
greatest of tragedies occurs when the partners of a relationship break
off their communication with each other. Without communication, the
possibilities for a relationship become hopeless, the resources of the
partners for the relationship are no longer available, the means for
healing the hurts that previous communication may have caused are no
longer present; and each, when he recovers from his need to justify
himself and hurt the other, will find himself in a bottomless pit of
loneliness from which he cannot be pulled except by the ropes of
communication, which may or may not be capable of pulling him out again
because of their weakened condition. Many of us know what it means to be
in a foreign country where we cannot speak the language, but the
loneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the loneliness
that is the product of an alienation that has been produced by either
irresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful refusal to
employ them.
If there is any one indispensable insight with which a young married
couple should begin their life together, it is that they should try to
keep open, at all cost, the lines of communication between them.
Everyone needs and should have premarital counseling, if only to help
them to this all important insight. Here is a place where the church's
ministry needs to be strengthened, since so many people turn to the
church to have their marriages solemnized. Before each marriage is
performed, the minister should meet with the couple and help them
prepare for the relationship, and he should include in that preparation
the guidance that will help them to understand how indispensably
important to its preservation, and, therefore, to their life together,
are all the means of communication between them. Fortunately, more and
more ministers are assuming this responsibility; and fortunately, also,
more and more seminaries are providing instructions that teach
ministers how to minister helpfully at this strategically important
time. But much more needs to be done. Many marital breakdowns due to
failure of communication could be alleviated, if not prevented, by
giving young couples assistance when they are beginning their life
together.
But communication is indispensable in all relationships, and not only in
the personal ones like marriage. In labor disputes, for instance, the
bargaining relationship breaks down when either one or both parties
abandon the attempt to communicate with the other. Therefore, we may
conclude, in paraphrase of the Scriptures: If any man says that he loves
God and will not try to communicate with his brother, he is a liar!
But what is communication, and why is it so difficult to achieve? Most
people seem to think of communication as getting a message across to
another person. "You tell him what you want him to know." This concept
produces a one-way verbal flow for which the term "monologue" is
descriptive. Much of the church's so-called communication is
monological, with preachers and teachers telling their hearers, both
adults and children, the message they think they should know. The
difficulty with monological activity is that it renders the hearer
passive. It assumes that he is a receptacle into which the desired
message may be poured. It eliminates the possibility of his active
participation in the formulation of the message, and seems not to heed
that a part of the message is in the person who is to receive it.
Those who have studied the dynamics of communication and the process by
which it occurs are convinced that the monological principle is
contradictory to the nature of communication, and as a method is the
least effective. Reflective observation of our own learning indicates
that communication is most effective when we become a part of the
process and meet the message with our own content. Furthermore, the
monological principle is not one that was used by our Lord. He, Who was
the full incarnation of love, made people participants in the Good News
that He proclaimed. We think, for example, of His conversation with the
woman at the well, in the course of which she moved from her superficial
understanding of water to His understanding of the water of life,
wherein the meaning of her life was revealed to her.[21] Again, we think
of the lawyer who put Him to a test by asking what he must do to inherit
eternal life, and our Lord drew him out in such a way that he answered
his own question.[22] The Gospels are full of such illustrations of our
Lord's method of communication. It is curious, therefore, that the
church has settled for the opposite monological principle which is quite
unequal to the task of conveying the full meanings of the gospel.
_Communication Is Dialogue_
Our Lord's method, which we may call the dialogical, has been vindicated
by modern research into the dynamics of communication, which has
demonstrated conclusively that the to-and-fro process between teacher
and pupil, between parent and child, provides the most dependable and
permanent kind of education. What is that to-and-fro between one who
knows and one who does not? The monological argument against the
dialogical process is that the ignorant and untutored have nothing to
contribute, so that the addition of zero and zero equals zero. This kind
of comment, which is made by surprisingly intelligent and otherwise
perceptive people, and all too often by educators, demonstrates how
little they know about the processes of learning. Nor does it follow
that the dialogical principle forbids the use of the monological method.
There is a place for the lecture and for direct presentation of content,
but to be most useful they should be in a dialogical context.
Furthermore, it is quite possible for a person giving a lecture to give
it in such a way that he draws his hearers into active response to his
thought, and although they remain verbally silent, the effect is that of
dialogue. As a matter of fact, one should not confuse the different
methods of teaching with the dialogical concept of communication. Both
the lecturer and the discussion leader can be either monological or
dialogical, even though they are using different methods. The person who
believes that communication, and therefore education, is dialogical in
nature, will use every tool in the accomplishment of his purpose. When
the question needs to be raised, he may use the discussion method or
perhaps some visual aid. When an answer is indicated, he may give a
lecture or use some other transmissive resource. But his orientation to
his task is based on his belief that his accomplishments as a leader are
dependent partly upon what his pupil brings to learning, and that for
education to take place their relationship must be mutual.
What is it that the learner brings that is of such great value to the
teacher? What possibly can the child have that the parent needs in order
to help the child learn and mature? The child, and every person for that
matter, brings to every encounter meanings drawn from his previous
experience which, in one way or another, prepares him for what is to be
learned. In Chapter IV we considered some of the early, basic
acquisitions of the individual; for example, the meanings of trust and
mistrust acquired in his first year, of liberating autonomy or resentful
dependence, and other meanings which influence to a high degree his
openness to the teacher and to what the teacher has to give. In addition
to these basic meanings, he has a whole host of others which he has
picked up from his previous experience: knowledge of people, of himself,
of the world in which he lives, of the nature of things, all of which he
uses in response to the approach of parent, teacher, friend, or whoever
may be apt to confront him with new truth.
We need to remember that the meanings the learner brings are far from
complete and mature, and that he is in the process of growing and
becoming more adequate. He wants to learn, but he does not want to learn
at the price of his own integrity. In learning he wants to have the
sense of acquiring new powers. Any approach to him that seems to
diminish him in any way closes him as a responsive, learning person.
Furthermore, his experience thus far and its meaning produce in him
questions for which he would like to have answers. The individual,
therefore, brings to his meeting with others certain beliefs, attitudes,
understandings, knowledge, and questions, which, in one way or another,
have prepared him or closed him to learning. A good teacher,
accordingly, pays attention to what his pupil brings.
The teacher (and here I am not thinking of the professional teacher
only) first makes it his business to find out about his pupil or about
the person with whom he wishes to communicate. As teacher, he needs to
know as much about his pupil as he needs to know about his subject. He
wants to help him ask his questions, so that what is communicated will
be an answer to his questions. All too often what we offer as answers
fail because they are addressed to questions which have not been asked,
and, therefore, do not have meaning for them. The parent and teacher,
therefore, should seek to call forth and formulate the understandings of
children in order that they may more readily hear and understand the new
truth that is being presented.