The power of goodness in ONE kind voice

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

My 51 years have taught me much, and I am certainly a learner, but I learned a new thing recently, or perhaps you can call it a power.

Unfortunately, words like power, privilege, and even righteousness have negative intonations nowadays. We tend to think of power as bad, in the way it may be misused, and privilege in the way of entitlement, and with righteousness we think in terms of self-righteousness.

But there is also the power of goodness.

Things that are good are thoroughly good. They are unspoiled. They have no bad way about them. There is a purity about goodness that is trustworthy.

This is the new thing I learned through a recent experience.

There was a particular matter that was important to me, and someone listened. They didn’t take my side so much as they simply empathised. They didn’t appear to be partial to my side or the other side. But they could see my viewpoint. They sought to understand. And when they spoke, they spoke kindly.

This is one thing to experience. It is another thing entirely to experience something of God in the intervening weeks, as I’ve watched what has happened in my spirit as a result. Perhaps there was some hardness of heart there. Maybe I was unconscious to it. Whatever it was, being heard in such a way as to hear our truth reflected back to us is the power of goodness in one kind voice.

One.

One is all it takes. That’s what I was shown.

It’s only after someone has truly listened to us that we realise how important that listening was. Whenever we share something personal or confidential or important, we are not looking so much for universal agreement according to our view of things. We are looking for some form of validation that our thinking is okay. It may not be perfect. But to be listened to in a way that validates our experience is crucial. To be listened to in a way that the other person accepts as palatable.

Listening in this way is merely understanding that we see another person’s perception. We just need to see it. It’s easy to agree that’s the way they see things; we just heard them say it.

They have reason and rationale behind their view. It makes sense to them. We can see why it makes sense to them. And there is the power of goodness about allowing a person to hold their perception. They cannot and will not shift it easily. It’s how they see.

To allow another person to be themselves
is such a necessary gift of love.

Our viewpoint is not about judging or condemning, because that isn’t the point. The point about listening is not to influence; the point about listening is first to seek to understand. Only when we understand can we hope to influence, but first we must understand, and we cannot understand if we are judging another person’s perception.

We need to take the perception at face value. By listening to another person to the degree that we do not judge what they say as right or wrong is the right way to care for them as the person in our presence; a gift we’re prepared to give everyone.

Understanding is an initial, and never more crucial step.

There is a power of goodness in one kind voice.

One kind voice has the power to repeat back to us what we see and to be able to agree with us that that perception is valid.

There is great power in being believed.
An even greater power than we could imagine.

In one kind voice we hear such validation that brings instant peace. We no longer need to fight so much for our truth. Someone else has ‘seen’ us. How important is it to be seen?

There is more power in one kind voice that sees us than in ten ambivalent conspirators.