Bonhoeffer and Echo Chambers
Through all of the current warring political systems I have been witnessing the church’s reaction and it has alarmingly mimicked the rest of the world. Blues to the left, Reds to the right, and the eucharist table stands alone on the divided center. It’s been too difficult to pass the cup to our neighbor because the polarization has spread us thin.
Christianity Today had an online article* that brought up a point I hadn’t really considered. It was posed that the problem isn’t that we are fighting, but that we have actually stopped. To me, it seems that there has been too much talk, but really, we aren’t having productive conversations at all. We say our peace, shut down from listening to the other side, and then we divide into camps - finding our echo chamber of unchallenged beliefs and rally together with all of our might. We bombard others with our understanding and then leave the room.
It reminds me of Paul’s letter of correction to Corinth, Greece - letters that addressed similar issues within the walls of the church. Their motivations were not political, but the dynamic of power was similar: where they were elevating their gifts with egotism, we elevate our political party and personal understanding with the same. In both instances, the body of Christ is at risk of negating the truth that love - and love alone - establishes the true mark of Christianity. Not egotism, knowledge or talents, but the permanence of love.
In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains in the excerpt titled “On the Ministry of Listening:”
“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear.
So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.
Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too.
This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.”
The potency of listening, outlined by Bonhoeffer, is crucial not only to our relationships within our community, but with our faith itself. Listening lends understanding, cooperation, humility, and spiritual life. When we elevate our own voice, we are letting the logistics of our morality interfere and undermine the very morals we are fighting for. Paul made it very clear that love begins when the needs of others supersede our own. When the individual expressions of our faith create interpersonal conflicts within the body, it is usually from the scarcity of love, and an overabundance of our opinion (even if our opinion is indeed, correct). What good is our morality if we’re weaponizing it against each other? What good are our causes if they are creating isolation from the community around us?
I pose that we steer clear of our echo chambers. Can we rip down the red tape of politics and pull up a chair to the family table to really talk through our differences? While an echo chamber feels good, it is not a safe space at all. It is a space that will falsely reassure you of what you want to hear, at the cost of closing you in on all sides. There is no openness or freedom, only sounds reverberating through a hollow enclosure.
Our gifts, our insights, our knowledge, and understanding mean nothing without love at its center. We can say all of the right things and be completely wrong. We can have the moral high ground and it never bring freedom to the oppressed. We can know all of the right things, and be so far from the heart of God. We will be noisy, clanging cymbals who overpower with our desire to be heard, while the rest of the world around us is plugging up their ears. Let’s point ourselves in a new direction, one that begins with listening deeply to one another.
*“At Purple Churches, Pastors Struggle with Polarized Congregations” Christianity Today online