Listen for the Person Inside the Story
Labels are efficient. They also hide people. Let a story interrupt the shorthand we use for someone else's life.
By Pastor Chris Cahill · 2 minute read · Reflection
A label is faster than a life
A label is quick work. Listening to a life takes longer. Music and story can slow us down enough to notice how much the label left out, including the person we thought we had already understood.
Someone carries those memories, choices, and longings. Draw near with care before deciding how their story fits your argument or your own experience.
Understanding is not automatic agreement
A song may give voice to a person whose choices you question. Hearing the grief, fear, or hope within that voice does not require you to approve every action. It does make careless judgment harder to defend.
Compassion is sometimes mistaken for surrender. We can understand how someone arrived somewhere and still question the path. We can take harm seriously without shrinking the person who caused it to that harm alone.
Let the story complicate your first account
Choose a story or song that presents an experience outside your own. Ask what the character wants, fears, remembers, and misunderstands. Which details would vanish if you replaced the story with a label? Where does the account ask you to reconsider an assumption?
One artistic portrayal cannot tell us everything about a whole group. Let it awaken curiosity, then follow that curiosity with fuller, more responsible listening to actual people.
Let the listening reach a neighbor
Being moved for a few minutes is a beginning. Carry it into life by asking a better question, describing someone’s view more fairly, or refusing to make their pain a convenient example in your argument.
Christian compassion asks us to recognize a neighbor before deciding what usefulness their story has for us.
Let your attention travel beyond the song. Approach a neighbor with less certainty that you already know their life and more willingness to hear it.
From the book
Imagine Reimagined — The Moral Imagination — What It Takes to See the Other. Adapted and expanded for this web reflection.
Faith, hope, and love in action through Christ and kindness.
