"You're Not Listening"

The dangers of moving the goalposts on earnest engagement

For a variety of reasons, listening well is often a difficult thing to do. It’s far easier to simply wait our turn to talk or respond—especially when we think we know where someone is going, have already been down that road, stayed in the hotel there, eaten the local cuisine and concluded the place is garbage.

And yet, despite its difficulty, listening well is not only a good thing, but a necessary thing. Progress often depends on it, particularly in the areas of advancing the common good and developing a healthy sense of collective cultural identity.

It is for these reasons that the disturbing trend to fundamentally redefine what “listening” means must be addressed head-on.

Two Kinds of “Listening”

Listening well to someone generally means hearing and understanding what they are saying well enough to repeat it back to them and have them affirm that our recapitulation accurately expresses their ideas. This looks something like: “What I hear you saying is…” followed by, “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” When we have listened well, we understand a position well enough to even play devil’s advocate on its behalf.

We should pause to point out that while this is not a particularly high bar to meet, it generally isn’t met by most interlocutors in discussions surrounding hot-button social issues. Nowhere is this failure more evident than on social media. Instead, people often resort to reactionary sensationalism after being “triggered” by the slightest phrasal infraction, or they grab hold of token slogans and cues in order to label and dismiss someone before truly hearing them out.

Once more—listening well is hard. Most people aren’t great at it, not because they lack the ability, but because they either don’t care enough to put in the effort it requires or they believe they already know the truth with such precision and confidence that they are no longer (if they ever were) in “learning mode.” Instead, they have shifted to “teacher mode,” seeking to coach the population. Both dispositions are antithetical to respecting others by listening well.

Having acknowledged this deficit, an even more disturbing pattern has emerged alongside ascendant activism: the insistence on a different definition of listening altogether. On this second view, listening well is tantamount to agreement with—or being persuaded by—what someone is saying. Hear someone out, summarize their ideas accurately, and then say, “I simply disagree and think you’re wrong”? You guessed it—you haven’t really listened.

The implication is that if you had truly listened well, you would come to agree with the viewpoint being expressed. Apparently, such ideas are self-evidently true once genuinely grasped.

Listening During the Black Lives Matter Movement

In recent memory, nowhere was this trend more visible than in the months and years following George Floyd’s murder and the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many white individuals, desiring to publicly express solidarity, emphasized their commitment to “listening well” to the voices of the oppressed and a wide range of minority perspectives.

Tragically, many found they had bitten off more than they could chew. They came to stand against racism and were presented not only with a new definition of it, but also with claims that their own racism was entrenched at deeper levels than they could imagine—that they were inevitably oppressors on account of their identity: white skin, two-parent households, cisgender norms, and heteronormative frameworks. Unsurprisingly, those who did not accept these claims wholesale were told they weren’t really listening—just like an oppressor.

Of course, more measured voices existed, but they didn’t receive the same attention—or the book deals. Those who listened but disagreed were often accused of having already made up their minds.

Listening During the #MeToo Movement

A similar trend appeared a few years earlier with the #MeToo movement. Despite beginning as an ostensibly healthy expression of solidarity among women who had experienced sexual abuse or harassment, the movement was quickly co-opted by more ideological agendas. It became a platform not only for sharing painful experiences, but also for advancing broader claims about gender, sexuality, and the nature of patriarchy.

As with later racial debates, people—especially men—who sought to “listen well” were often evaluated not on their understanding, but on their agreement. Perhaps more revealing than initially intended was one of the most popular accompanying hashtags: #BelieveWomen.

In many cases, this meant taking women seriously when they reported abuse or harassment. And while some—including many women—argued that terms like “trauma” and “abuse” were occasionally stretched beyond their meaningful limits, there was still something healthy in the call to take such claims seriously.

However, this expectation extended beyond personal testimony. Many insisted that others (especially men) affirm broader perspectives on issues such as abortion rights, feminist reinterpretations of history and dismantling “the patriarchy” (however that is defined). Men who expressed sympathy for victims but rejected the accompanying social philosophy were told they weren’t truly listening. If they had been, they would have recognized the interconnected nature of these ideas. They either hadn’t listened carefully enough or were simply too dull to understand the nuances of social causes and effects—and perhaps both.

In both cases, accusations of “not listening” gained traction partly because many people genuinely were, in fact, not listening. Some dismissed entire frameworks outright without engaging them, waiting only for their turn to speak while preparing to regurgitate talking points they hadn’t deeply examined or weaponize Thomas Sowell quotes to “own the libs.”

Unfortunately, those who listened carefully but disagreed were lumped together with those who dismissed ideas outright. After all, they ended in the same place—disagreement. The illusion was created that disagreement itself proved a failure to listen. Combined with the fact that some people did, in fact, change their minds after “waking up” to different perspectives, a new definition of listening began to take hold with the “humble mind-changer” held up as the paradigm.

Trust vs. Truth

To be clear, this redefinition is deeply problematic, primarily because it substitutes truth with trust. “Believe me because I have a unique, superior perspective” is fundamentally different from “Believe me because of reasons supported by evidence.”

It is true that much of our knowledge depends on testimony—especially in cases like personal experiences of abuse or scientific observation. But in discussions involving values, norms, historical interpretation, and ethical frameworks, lived experience alone does not confer infallibility, superior reasoning, or moral authority.

In fact, just as a dentist who has never had a toothache may still better understand its causes and treatments than a suffering patient, those outside a given experience may sometimes see the broader picture more clearly. Imagine a patient insisting: “You’ve never had a toothache, so you can’t disagree with my diagnosis—believe dental sufferers.” Clearly, something has gone wrong.

We must therefore evaluate listening not by agreement, but by demonstrated understanding—accurately representing another person’s position before responding.

Given that Christians are called to be “quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19), it is especially important to understand what this requires. Listening well is an act of respect and love. Failure here risks more than mere stubbornness—it risks failing to properly hear God’s word.

And that is a mistake we cannot afford to make.

Let us, then, strive to be good listeners—while also insisting that the definition of listening has not changed.