“…it is mutual recognition— the ability to see yourself in another— that is constitutive of a democratic society and of the very sense of one’s own self. Put differently, mutual recognition presupposes humanity.”
- Karida L. Brown, Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia
I have a daughter in eighth grade right now who is the fullness of an eighth grade daughter. I love it. She is full of humor, sarcasm, wit, attitude, and sass. My wife would tell you she’s learned most of that from me. My wife is probably right. One of the other things my daughter has learned is the blunt force eye roll she gives when one of her parents isn’t really paying attention to what she’s saying. To be fair, she says a great deal over the course of a day. But she refuses to let us off the hook when we are enraptured with our social media scrolling. She deeply, deeply, cares about being heard. As we all do.
This has been a tough week. Last Wednesday, January 6, 2021, we watched as a large group of protesters opposed to the results of our national presidential election became a smaller group of rioters who breached the walls of our nation’s capitol in an attempt to assert their own influence and authority. It was painful to try to explain to my kids what was taking place, how it could have happened, and what might happen next. There are few answers.
In the week since that awful scene, my mind hasn’t shut down. News outlets have labeled the events an attempted insurrection and the rioters a group of domestic terrorists. The country’s House of Representatives impeached President Trump for a second time. The National Guard has descended on Washington, DC in the days leading up to President-Elect Biden’s inauguration to offer security. More troops now reside in DC than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
And we continue to watch, in horror and confusion and anger and anxiety, while sitting at home in the midst of a global pandemic that doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
Back in January of 2002, just a few months after the tragic attacks of 9/11, then Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed a group of political and business leaders and told them that military attacks on terrorists should be followed by an aggressive war on poverty and hopelessness. He suggested that,
“As we fight terrorism using military means and legal means and law-enforcement and intelligence means ... we also have to put hope back in the hearts of people.”
- Colin Powell, 2002
Over the past week i’ve wrestled with many facets of the national trauma we’ve all experienced. I work in a middle school where we talk a lot about trauma. We talk about being trauma-informed, about caring for the whole child and understanding the core of their emotions rather than just the overflow of those emotions that comes through negative actions. In the wake of what happened on January 6, perhaps we need to revisit Mr. Powell’s words and consider - even among the scenes of those domestic terrorists attacking the capitol - what an aggressive war on poverty and hopelessness looks like in such a (divided) time as this.
I believe it starts with hearing.
In the chaos of the past week, I’ve thought a lot about my daughter’s efforts to make us hear her and what a theology of hearing might actually entail. After watching the ensuing social media feeds after the capitol riots and realizing, once again, that we humans, with all our political bravado and supposed cultural expertise, have gotten no better at actually hearing our brothers and sisters and the cries of their hearts. We need a primer on the value of hearing and hearing well. It may be possible, once again, that in the midst of a new wave of domestic terrorism, we need to do more than wage war on the acts (which of course should happen), but also wage war on the hopelessness that comes from not being heard. So, a few observations about hearing that I believe speak from the Scriptures to this present moment.
True hearing reveals our own brokenness. Early on in the Creation narratives of Genesis, we find Adam and Eve dealing with the weight of their own sin. We see them rejecting God’s promise and recognizing their own nudity (physical, yes, but also social, relational, and emotional). And we see them, in chapter 3 as they hear God looking for them, hiding.
Is it possible today that we are not hearing others because we are afraid of what it might cost us to truly listen? Is it possible that those who criticize the capitol rioters as dumb, ignorant radicals are missing the opportunity to truly listen to a population that is hurting, fearful, antagonized, and worn out from trying to defend world views that are cancelled more quickly than they are understood? Is it possible that those who attack Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement intent on wreaking havoc on institutional structures are fearful of what it might cost them to truly understand racial injustice at a systemic level?
True hearing requires more from us. My daughter requires more than me being able to repeat her words. She requires that I look at her, put the distractions away, hear her words and hear what is behind her words. True hearing today is the same. It demands we do more than defend; it expects us to, even as we listen, go to the depths of our own brokenness and confront the same emotional and relational nakedness that has existed within us since the start of creation.
Hearing and seeing go hand in hand. When we hear someone, we see someone. When we see someone, we will listen to someone. The story of Abram, his wife Sarai, and his mistress Hagar proves this to us. In the wake of bad decisions, Hagar is cast out of the house of her owners Sarai and Abram and left without hope to fend for her own future. In her despair, she meets Yahweh in the wilderness where he provides for her and her illegitimate child. It is, in this meeting, that she identifies God as El Roi - the God who sees (Genesis 16). Five chapters later, Hagar has been cast away by Sarai yet again, and she finds herself again desperate in the wilderness. And she finds herself again at the mercy of Yahweh. The God who sees returns, and becomes the God who hears (Genesis 21:17).
You cannot hear someone if you don’t see them. We’ve learned this in the past year haven’t we? Our faces covered in masks have shown us how difficult is to truly understand the words someone speaks when we can’t see the mouth that speaks them. This is why arguments on social media are so easy, and I am so guilty. We can criticize much more rapidly, tear down much more aggressively, and deconstruct much more painfully when we don’t have to see the face of the person with whom we are sparring.
What Colin Powell was speaking to in 2002 was the reality that we could win a war against terrorists with military force and lose the war against terrorism to poverty and hopelessness. He saw and he heard. He understood. Karida L. Brown, in her brilliant work Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia, makes the same point. In a nation facing so much division and anger today, we will not recover democracy until we practice the work of seeing ourselves in another. This is hearing - and seeing - all wrapped up in the act of mutual recognition.
True hearing does not negate action. Notice that Colin Powell didn’t make an argument that terrorists should not be stopped and simply be listened to. What we witnessed at the capitol in the past week cannot be condoned - no matter the heart cries of those who used brute force to fight their way into the halls of power. It is perfectly feasible to call these rioters domestic terrorists in need of arrest, punishment, and consequence, and also say they are acting out of hopelessness in the same sentence. True hearing doesn’t alleviate the work of justice. It doesn’t put out of mind the need to fight for peace in the moments where it is needed. We must act. Our leaders must act. Our authorities must act. But we must do so while hearing the thing behind the thing. We must recapture the both/and rather than the either/or. Mr. Powell’s recognition of the hopelessness behind the terror was an exercise in discernment, a wisdom spoken with acceptable tension.
We need more of this today. While our debate and dialogue online has become the equivalent of second-grade four square games (“It was in!” “No it was out!” “Black Lives Matter protesters rioted too!” “But not as bad as the Trump supporters!”), we must find our way out of that spiral of argumentation and move toward just action and authentic hearing. Simply put, we must not compromise ethical right and wrong for the sake of our preferred perspective and we must keep hearing the perspectives outside our own.
True hearing shows us the heart of God. There is perhaps no more powerful story in the Old Testament than that of Hagar mentioned above. A slave who was handed over by her owner (Sarai) to sleep with Sarai’s husband Abram and give him a child that Sarai was unable to produce. A slave who was hated for her obedience. A slave who found herself with an unwanted pregnancy cast into the wilderness, homeless and hopeless. A slave who encountered the God of Creation, the God who comes to find those who are hopeless, the God who sees and hears in the most desolate places we wander. This is Hagar - a desperate woman who desperately needed to be heard.
I heard my eighth grader authentically last Wednesday. As we talked about the events at the capitol she asked the expected questions. Why? How? What does this mean? What could happen next? But I heard her beyond that. And I heard the questions behind the questions. The real questions many of our children are asking of all of us politically-opinionated, social-media savvy adults right now:
Will you do something about this?
Will you stop arguing with each other?
Will you find a way to unite again?
Will you learn to be kind to each other?
Will you stop yelling, convincing, debating, criticizing, refuting, attacking, and truly hear each other?
Will you wage a war on hopelessness?
Perhaps we all need a good eye roll to get us to start paying attention.