Day 258: Social Listening

Day 258

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith, by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland – pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Thirty-seven    Friday 27 November 2020

Social Listening

“How do we listen to one another in a fractured world? Our society is polarized by increasing partisanship…the gulf between the aisles is widening and opinions of the ‘other side’ are souring. We see it in conflicts on the streets, read it in the news, hear it online…Some days, social media seems to only amplify the noise. Discourse can give way to grandstanding and scattershot broadcasting, but there is an alternative use for social media that allows us to connect more deeply, serve authentically and do so with less stress and doubt: social listening. Social listening is a practice that requires us to quietly, humbly observe conversations happening on social media…learn from them,…We know that healthy relationships require listening, yet we can forget the same is true for online communications. On social media, as in life, it’s important to listen more than we speak.” - From an article by the same name in the current issue of a Christian magazine.

We have all become too familiar with a term we knew nothing about a year ago: social distancing. Now comes another new concept thanks to the pandemic: social listening. We all need recalibrating in this department as there was a corporate loss of an ability to listen with sensitive ears when Satan asked a ‘listening question’ so long ago: “Did God really say…?”  It’s been dull of hearing from that day to this.

If we find we are unwilling or unable to hear others in terms of social listening, the dynamic remains consistent: we are unlikely able to listen to God, for the receptive mechanism within is one. Conversely learning to be quiet in the presence of God to listen for the Holy Spirit speaking  in prayer and in Scripture will bring to human interaction the same dynamic of quiet listening.   

James 1:19 is as with so much of what God says to us in His Word not a suggestion but a command: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” Social

listening is not adjunct to our existence, but central to it. Let’s add it to our skill set.

Reflective question: Where in your relationships do you need to talk less and listen more?

Reflective Scripture: Psalm 141:3 – “Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.”

Reflective hymn:

“O Lord, Make Haste to Hear My Cry” – 1912 Psalter

O guard my thoughts , I now implore,

And of my lips O keep the door;

Nor leave my sinful heart to stray,

Where evil footsteps lead the way.