Look at Me

David Brooks writes in How to Know a Person,

“Apparently we live in a society in which people don’t get to tell their stories. We work and live around people for years without ever knowing their tales. How did it come to be this way? …We don’t start conversations because we’re bad at predicting how much we’ll enjoy them. We underestimate how much others want to talk; we underestimate how much we will learn; we underestimate how quickly other people will want to go deep and get personal. If you give people a little nudge, they will share their life stories with enthusiasm… people are eager, often desperate, to be seen, heard, and understood. And yet we have built a culture, and a set of manners, in which that doesn’t happen.”

We’ve all heard little children demanding, “Look at me! Look at me!” Somewhere along the way we stop may asking for attention, but we never stop needing it. And for many people, an obsession with the screens in front of us leads us to stop offering attention to others. Brooks writes,

“The question everybody is unconsciously asking themselves when they meet you: ‘Am I a person to you? Do you care about me? Am I a priority for you?’”

All too often, even in the church and Christian organizations, it feels like the answer is No. The isolation of the pandemic accelerated our loss of social skills, including non-verbal communication, but this isn’t exactly a new problem. More than once in Scripture God made Himself known to those who felt invisible, such as Joseph, Moses, and Hannah. God spoke to Hagar in the wilderness, leading her to proclaim, “You are a God of seeing… Truly here I have seen Him who looks after me” (Gen. 16:13). Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and she told her neighbors, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did” (John 4:29). In the book of Acts, Peter and John saw a lame man and Peter said, “Look at us,” and then proceeded to heal the man. Truly seeing the man and his need resulted in a gift far greater than merely giving him alms.

The book of Proverbs has much to say about friendship and our words, such as:

• “A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends” (16:28).
• “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (17:17).
• “He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend” (22:11).
• “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (27:6).
• “Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest council” (27:9).

Brooks notes that many people think they are better conversationalists than they really are. And many more feel inadequate in conversation. While we can learn from books and blogs, perhaps the best teacher is experience. If we are more intentional in engaging in conversations and asking questions, we can learn a lot from one another.

May we be those who seek to let others know that they are seen and heard, and that they are loved by God and by us.

“Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Prov. 16:24).

Related resources:

Gavin Ortlund teaching on good listening

Russell Moore interviews David Brooks

Russell Moore and Andy Crouch on tech obsession

© 2024 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Connections

Some people might understand my feelings lately that I struggle to know how to connect with people in reciprocal ways. Although I have some people that I consider close friends, I have no idea whether those people perceive the relationships the same way I do. For them I may an acquaintance, coworker, friend, or close friend, but I don’t know.

I’ve been watching some YouTube videos from autistic folks lately, particularly from Tony Attwood, and also from “Mom on the Spectrum.” She has two videos on autism and friendship. I could identify with much of what she talked about in terms of not understanding what people expect from relationships or how to communicate in ways that are understood from both sides. However, I think much of what was said could apply to most anyone who is an introvert or highly sensitive person: hating small talk, wanting deeper conversations and perhaps going too deep too fast, finding group settings draining as you try to understand and navigate varying expectations, etc. Taking such videos at face value, and realizing that many may be coming from self-diagnosed autistics, one might conclude that the spectrum is incredibly wide. I think it is indeed wider than many people realize, because of the stereotypes that are prevalent in society (think Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory). I believe there is value in the “neurodiversity” conversation, and that we should stop thinking in terms of “normal” and “abnormal.” But that's kind of a tangential issue. 

As I’ve said before, I think most people in modern society could use training in how to develop real relationships and communicate better. We’ve become so tech-driven and socially-distanced that all relationships are suffering. Chatting at the coffee pot or making plans to spend quality time with people outside our nuclear family have become exceptions rather than the rule. Those of us who are introverts, have social anxiety, and/or are unmarried are finding it harder and harder to connect with people, and many of us are suffering from loneliness in our isolation.

One of the issues I have is trying to figure out how to ask people for the relational interaction I want and need. I think this is particularly hard in church relationships because we’re constantly being told “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3-4). I’ve always taken that to mean: never ask for help, never intrude on anyone else’s time and space, just do your job to serve other people and don’t expect anything in return. However, I would note a couple things:

1) Paul said “look not only to his own interests.” He didn’t say “Ignore your own interests.” Stewarding your time, energy, and relationships well shouldn’t have to mean burning out because you’ve given all you can and no one is feeding back into your life. Jesus quoted from Isaiah 42, “a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not quench” (Matt. 12:20). When we are bruised and depleted, we need people who will help to hold us up. What we don’t need is another command to “think about others first.” (I hate the acronym “Jesus-Others-You,” and the way sayings like that are often used to shame people into serving others.) While I do think some of the conversations about “self-care” often turn into selfishness, we need to reframe the issues. Some authors have framed it this way: the choice is not just between selfishness and selflessness, but also includes self-awareness. Which brings me to my second observation:

2) We are all at different places in our daily walk with God. Some are experiencing times of weakness, while others are in times of strength. Some are great encouragers, others are great leaders, and others are great at serving others. Some currently have many demands on their time and energy, while others have more freedom, and some people simply have more energy to begin with. And some people find relationships easier to navigate than others do. There is no single standard for what loving and serving one another should look like. And that’s why we belong to the Body of Christ, where all our gifts, abilities, and personalities should come together and we “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thess. 5:11), each in our unique ways. Looking to the interests of others ought to mean “What do I currently have to contribute and how might that benefit a particular person or group? And where am I weak that I need others to help and support me right now?”

Admittedly, our perceptions of our own wants and needs can be tainted by sin, but that doesn’t mean we totally ignore our feelings of weakness and depletion. We are human beings who are made to need one another, not automatons that can run continuously without recharging. I would suggest that this misperception is a prime factor in pastoral burnout as well as people leaving the church. True, church is not “all about me,” but I am one of the “one anothers” who needs the church just as much as it needs me.

“In [Christ] the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21-22).

© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Wrong Way

“There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Prov. 12:18).

I screwed up. I used rash, sarcastic words instead of loving, gracious words. I expressed my hurt and frustration in ways that hurt others. What I might have said instead in this particular situation— “I miss seeing the people I love and talking to them on a regular basis… I don’t like feeling invisible to those around me… I’m tired of feeling lonely but I don’t know how to connect with busy people…”

Feeling distant and unseen, my words only created greater distance. Feeling insecure, my words created greater insecurity. Feeling like I was on the outside looking in, my words only built the wall higher. Feeling confused about the state of the relationship, my words only made it more unclear.

Being Christian doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes or that we don’t need to keep learning. But it does mean we need to face our mistakes and reconcile relationships. As this TGC article, “Battling Sinful Sarcasm” points out, our words can either hurt or heal, and we need to learn to evaluate them before they come out of our mouths or fingertips. Perhaps if I’d read this article when it came out 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have had to learn the lesson the hard way.

In a world of instant communication, where the rule is “post while it’s hot,” and where snark reigns supreme, it’s easy to forget that other people may not perceive things the way they are intended. And that kind of lazy communication has infiltrated verbal interactions as well. I’ll admit I’m not good at figuring out what other people are thinking, but now I see better that I can’t assume that they can read me either. It seems to me that most everyone needs training in interpersonal communication, and perhaps especially so in the church where we are to follow Scriptural commands such as:

“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Col. 4:6).

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4:29).

On the Ephesians verse, in the past I always thought of “corrupting talk” as referring to language that uses God’s name in vain or intentionally leads others into sin and condemnation. The Greek word can also be translated rotten, worthless, or useless. Most of the other places where it is used in the New Testament are Jesus’ references to bad fruit (Matt. 7:17-18 et al). Anything that bears bad fruit is corrupting God’s design for His world and His people. Our words are to build up, not tear down. They are to be full of grace and truth, not barbs and innuendo. They are to reflect how much we love one another.

In the devotional book Take Heart by David Powlison, the reading for April 20 includes this prayer:

“Our Father, please have mercy on us. We live so carelessly… Let us take seriously the delightful call of Christ, calling us out of darkness into light. Let us embrace your call in ways that are life rearranging, the call that we would become men and women who contribute to the quantum of light in the dark world, and don’t just bumble along as one more person stumbling through the darkness.”

“He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend” (Prov. 22:11).

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Here’s a related post I wrote last year: https://mental3degree.blogspot.com/2022/08/fully-present.html

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© 2023 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV and all images copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Under Control

I’ve been reading Tony Reinke’s book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You. Ironically, Facebook got knocked out of commission for several hours Monday. Perhaps God was encouraging me (and everyone else) to consider the message of the book even more seriously. My social media use tends to increase over time until I make a conscious effort to pull back, and this is one of those times.

As I was reading about the decline in reading comprehension and the growing determination to catalogue our lives in post-worthy images, I imagined how a few scenes from Jesus’s life on earth might have been different:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit… meek… merciful…” -Yeah, whatever. Keep scrolling.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted…” -Retweet!

Hey, I got 136 likes on my post! Who’s the greatest now? LOL -“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”

Who are we missing on this Zoom meeting? -Well, Andrew went fishing, Peter’s mother-in-law is sick again, and no one knows where Judas is tonight.

“One of you will betray Me.” -Wait, what did He say? I was checking my messages.

OK, so maybe we aren’t much different from the disciples. We all wrestle in varying degrees with pride, distraction, and desire for attention and approval. Smartphones and social media connections just give us a quick and easy way to do so.

Reinke writes about a theology of remembering:

“Whatever else is at play in the digital age, Christians are commanded over and over to remember. We must not lose our past and our future for moment-by-moment tweets and texts on our phones… All spiritual growth is rooted in remembering what Christ has done in me… Remembering is one of the key spiritual disciplines we must guard with vigilance amid the mind-fragmenting and past-forgetting temptations of the digital age” (187-188).

I would add to that a different sense of the word remember. We need to re-member who we are created to be as the Body of Christ. Social media is great at fragmenting us into camps that are at odds with one another over all kinds of issues. We interpret likes and follows as affirmation that we are in the “right” crowd, even as we’ve simultaneously alienated friends and neighbors that we go to church with. We essentially dismember one set of relationships that’s based on eternal principles for another set based on the illusion of superficial agreement.

“Jesus boils down the purpose and aim of our lives into two goals: treasure God with your whole being, and then pour out your God-centered joy in love for others. On these two commands all other smartphone laws depend: (190).

Reinke asks some good questions, including: “Do my smartphone behaviors move me toward God or away from him? …Do my smartphone behaviors edify me and others, or do they build nothing of lasting value?” (194). I’m sure we could all find areas where we could improve our words and actions to better love God and our neighbors.

“I am not my own. I am owned by my Lord. I have been bought with a price, which means I must glorify Christ with my thumbs, my ears, my eyes, and my time… I do not have ‘time to kill’—I have time to redeem” (180).

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15-16).

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© 2021 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV. Image courtesy of Amazon. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.