Hear the Difference?

By Robert Hansen

Go to a meeting, seminar or presentation, in business, education, sports, even personal growth. Whats the first thing you hear? Change! Everything is change. And we all have to, need to -- and get to -- change.

And whats the very first thing Jesus tells everyone? Change! [Greek metanoeite, Mt. 4:17]

So, whats the difference? Whats so special about what Jesus says? Change! is what everybody says.

Discover how surprisingly hard it is for Christians and non-Christians alike to hear the gospel -- even if shown the difference and that this difference makes all the difference in the world!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 13, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462820887

Robert Hansen

Robert Hansen, also known as RSnake, is the founder of the ha.ckers.org web application security lab and has been heavily involved in the hacking and the security industry since the mid 1990s. Robert has worked in banner advertizing and built click fraud detection in his role as CSO for several startups. For many years he ran the managed security services product lines for Cable & Wireless. At eBay he worked on anti-cross site scripting, anti-phishing, anti-virus and web application intrusion detection and countermeasures. He has spoken at Black Hat, the Gartner security round table and at Networld+Interop and he is a member of WASC, OWASP, and ISSA.

Book preview

HEAR

THE

DIFFERENCE?

Robert Hansen

Copyright © 2000 by Robert Hansen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

1

What’s the Difference?

2

Not More Penting

3

The Power of Negative Thinking

4

Carnations

5

Justification by [What] Works

6

Just as I Am

7

Hearing Choice as Prime

8

I Have Something to Relate to You—Or Do I?

9

Faith, Grace and Hope: Weak Sisters?

10

The Am

11

And

12

A Matter of Lifes and Deaths

13

Exoduction

Remembering Joseph Sittler

1

What’s the Difference?

Go to a meeting, seminar, session or talk, in business, education, sports, you name it. What’s the first thing the speaker says, in one form or another?

We’ve all got to change. You don’t just have to let things happen. Visualize the things you want and need out of life—they’re right out there before you—and go for them! Dream your dreams and go out and realize them. Make it happen!...

Listen, in this business either you change or you go under. Those who can adapt, survive; if you can’t you’re history. Everything is changing, all the time. You gotta keep yourself one step ahead. Otherwise...

Look at the potential here! We mustn’t shortchange ourselves. If we can just actualize all we have...

My friends, the entire health care system in this country is fatally flawed. The issue must be faced. And what is called for is fundamental change...

It’s all a matter of change. Everything’s always changing. We need to be proactive. We’ve got to change, even before it seems we need to, even while things are going good, before they go bad. Now we’ve just got to make up our minds to do it.

Change! Everything is a matter of change. And we all have to, need to, and—good news!—get to change.

Do you know what is the very first thing Jesus says when he speaks to the public? That’s right: Change! (The Greek word in the New Testament is metanoeite, literally turn around and face the other way, repent.) Change! Jesus tells everyone. Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Mt. 4.17)

So . . . What’s the difference? What’s special, what’s unique, about what Jesus says? Change! is what everybody says.

It is surprisingly hard for us, Christians and non-Christians alike, to hear what the Christian gospel is talking about—even when we are shown and grasp the difference and are persuaded that this difference makes all the difference in the world.

It’s not as if we do not hear a difference in what Jesus says. We do. But the difference we hear is merely a difference of detail. That we all need to change is a given. How we change, whether Richard Simmons’ way, Anthony Robbins’ way—or Jesus’ way—is negotiable

We could decide to take up Jesus’ call to change. We could start going to church, reading the Bible, even leading a different kind of life. But we could just decide to lead a different kind of life—without all the rest. We could also decide to take up the call to change and start practicing Seven Effective Habits, following a Twelve-Step Program, believing in ourselves, or running marathons.

The call to change is continually being issued. The only question for each of us is, How? The difference is in the details.

Of course. How else is there to hear what Jesus is saying?

The trouble is that when we hear what Jesus is saying as we do we have already missed it. And we will continue to miss it, even if we take it up.

For which sounds negotiable and which non-negotiable: Change! or whatever the Christian gospel is talking about? Some of us may decide to become Christians. Some of us may decide to become vegetarians or libertarians—or a mixture of all three. But whatever else any of us may decide to believe or practice, and whatever exactly Jesus may be saying, all of us (as we cannot remind ourselves too often) have to, need to—and get to—change.

But to hear what the Christian gospel is talking about as something negotiable is to miss it. For it is not talking about something negotiable. To hear it as something discardable in favor of something else—or dismissible altogether—is not to hear it.

Hearing it as we do we reject—or accept—something other than it is.

How can something sound like the gospel when it sounds merely like a version of something else? How can something sound like the gospel when it sounds discardable and dismissible? How can what the Christian gospel is talking about sound like the gospel when it sounds negotiable in relation to something else which sounds non-negotiable? If anything sounds like the gospel it is what sounds non-negotiable.

However, what the Christian gospel is talking about is not a version of Change! that can be discarded in favor of another version of change. It is not simply talking about one way among many others to change. Jesus is not playing a variation on the theme of Change!; he is playing a completely different tune. What is involved here is not merely a difference in detail; it is a difference in kind. But hearing him as we do we miss the difference.

Difference? What difference? Jesus says, Change! And we do all have to change. How can he be saying something different?

So, what’s the difference?

I will indeed state the difference between what the Christian gospel is talking about and what Change! says—at the beginning of Chapter 2. I am not going to do so just yet because hearing what the Christian gospel is talking about—hearing, period—is much harder than just being able to state and discern doctrinal differences between what it and something else, like Change! might be saying. Even if we could even lay hands on a text from the Bible that said, The difference between what the Christian gospel is talking about and ‘Change!’ is thus and so; and even if, from the other side, we could find a statement on one of Richard Simmons’ tapes that stated the difference between what he means by Change! and what Jesus means by Change!; and even if we then agreed together that, yes, indeed, there is a difference, that the difference is not just one of detail, and that what the Christian gospel is talking about is not a version of Change!—we would still not be able to hear the difference. We would still be where we were when we started.

Why? Because we would still be hearing what the Christian gospel is talking about as a negotiable version of something else which does not sound negotiable.

For suppose, then, that we are able to answer the question, So, what’s the difference? Suppose we all hear that there is a difference between what the Christian gospel is talking about and "Change!"—and what the difference is. When we hear the answer, the question remains. So there’s a difference? So? What’s the difference?

Unless a stated difference makes a difference, we hear no difference. Jesus and the Christian gospel may indeed be saying something different from Change!; or they may, as it sounds, be saying a version of what everyone else says. So what?

Unsuspecting, we would-be evangelists rush ahead, "Oh, but that’s just it! What the Christian gospel is talking about does make a difference." And suppose, just suppose, we could somehow actually provide proof that it does. Aha! Now we, we . . .

Now we are in the same situation we were before. What the Christian gospel is talking about still sounds negotiable. We hear it as, at best, a mere version of what makes a difference. If it makes a difference, fine, we’ll consider it. If not . . .

And just like that, whatever Jesus and the Christian gospel are talking about is utterly swept away—again. It has been trumped by what does not sound negotiable. It still sounds dismissible and discardable. If it is not something that makes a difference, if it is not something that works, we will not take it up. Why would, how could, anyone take up something that does not make a difference?

We would-be evangelists, and would-be listeners, are caught in a bind from which there seems no escape. If we do not show that what the Christian gospel is talking about makes a difference, no one will listen to it. But equally, if we do, no one will hear it. It will still sound the way it did before. It will still sound negotiable compared to what does not sound negotiable: making a difference. If we take it up we will do so because it sounds like it makes a difference. We will continue to believe in what we believed in before we were told anything at all about the Christian gospel: we believe in what works.

How hard is it to hear what the Christian gospel is talking about? To hear, period? It is so hard that we would-be evangelists do not hear ourselves making it harder, even while it seems we are successfully sharing it. Hearing everything—including what the Christian gospel is talking about—as we do does not seem like a way of hearing; it seems to be simply what hearing is. It does not sound like there is any other way to hear. And yet, we render ourselves deaf to the difference.

Now wait. I hear the difference very well, thank you.

Such has been the response from individuals and groups—Christians and non-Christians alike—to whom I have suggested these things. The response has not come immediately, however. First there has been a momentary pause and a facial expression which suggest to me that, although they had not thought of my point before, now that they do, I am not imagining how we hear.

Now wait, I hear the difference. You are mixing apples and oranges. Jesus is talking about spiritual things and spiritual changes; others are talking about material things.

Jesus does indeed talk about spiritual things. But today this is hardly enough to make him sound unique. Surely spiritual talk is not limited to the Christian gospel—or even to religions or spiritual traditions. Not only do others explicitly talk of spiritual things; many more are heard to.

Richard Simmons talks about material things—many pounds of them. But does Richard Simmons talk about only material things? More to the point, is he heard to talk about only material things? Listen to some of the graduates of his program. They are able to talk with a believably evangelistic force about being touched and massively transformed at the deepest levels of their lives. They rave less about pounds lost than about self gained. Richard Simmons’ subject is the total person: the body plus self-image, beliefs, goals. He talks about health across a body-mind-spirit continuum. He makes clear that unless the would-be weight-loser understands the intimate connection between his weight and his whole being, he will only be a slim unhappy person instead of a fat unhappy person. Richard Simmons and many others seem able to describe health across a connection between body and mind and spirit in an over-arching oneness that sounds real.

When anyone, including Jesus, talks about spiritual things, do we listen to him or her differently from the way we listen to someone who is talking about a new diet—or a new investment strategy or a new coping technique? Quite the contrary. We listen to all of them in the same way. We bring to spiritual talk the same tough-minded, realistic questions we do for anyone who is calling on us to change. Even if it once did, listening to spiritual talk no longer forces us to shift auditory gears.

In fact, the mark and appeal of today’s spiritual talk is precisely that it seems to have transcended the split formerly perceived between the spiritual and the material. Engaging in it we seem to be empowered to talk about life in a new, holistically integrated way. Now what is heard as the truly spiritual is not removed and otherworldly. It is real and immediate and applicable to our lives.

Spiritual change is now heard to make a difference in our real, everyday lives, not merely in theologians’ doctrinal Never-neverland. This in itself is a great spiritual change. It is as if a new way of talking about the whole of life has opened up to us, one which encompasses the physical along with the (formerly merely) spiritual and makes it all real.

Now it can seem as natural and sensible for each one of us to attend to our spiritual life as it is to attend to our emotional life, our family life, our vocational life, our health life or any of the other components that make up our individual lifestyles. We listen for advice about any or all of them in the same nuts-and-bolts, realistic way. We understand that overall health and quality of life call for us to attend to each of these components individually and to the balance between them. There are plenty of folks brimming with advice about any and all of the components, including our spiritual life. We treat them all with the same reality-based, tough questioning: Does this advice relate to me? Will it help? What will I get out of it? Will it work?

So . . . if we do hear Jesus to sound different precisely because he talks about strictly spiritual as against material things, what kind of difference would this be? If this is the Christian gospel’s difference in kind, it is a difference of inferiority. It would be hard to hear it being made of the stuff that would qualify it to be the gospel. Such so-called spiritual talk would sound weak and unappealing in comparison with that of so many others.

I say so-called spiritual talk because, ironically, if whatever Jesus is talking about actually does sound different to us because he is heard to be talking about spiritual as opposed to material things, it no longer sounds very spiritual at all. It manufactures a distinction (between spiritual and non-spiritual) which today sounds as if it does not exist. We do not hear him addressing the whole of life the way others seem to be able to do. He sounds like he talks about spiritual things in a way which is not immediate. It is as though, to hear him, Jesus requires that we set up a compartment in life where what he says applies. He does sound different, but different as in remote, weak, and irrelevant compared to the many who immediately grab our attention.

What might have seemed like a point of pride or hope in some Christians (and even some non-Christians) who said that Jesus sounds different because he talks about spiritual things turns out to be a liability. The Christian gospel has been around a long time and is a part of many searching people’s upbringing. The call to make a genuine spiritual change may sound to us like a call to turn away from Jesus.

If what Jesus says has to earn a place—the place—in our lives, in competition with other candidates, unfortunately, even for many believers, he does not sound like he can. If he is talking about something spiritual which is different and set apart from real life, how can this sound better than the talk of those who are able to treat the spiritual and the everyday? Yet if he is talking, in his own way about the same sorts of things as everybody else, what does he add?

Why go to all the extra trouble to ferret out from the foundational Christian writings what will help our lives when others address us so much more directly and clearly? Why try to see whether the book of Isaiah might have something to say to me when I can spend my time reading about, say, self-esteem—which I know I need to take care of and which I know applies to me directly? Some Christian writers do write about self-esteem per se—or feelings or relationships or motivation—as many others do. But when we read them we can ask ourselves, Why not just read about these things directly, without the extra Christian component? Why not just go to the meat of what we need?

Of course, can we not argue that here is the difference: that what the Christian gospel is talking about is what we really need? But what if we cannot show this? Or perhaps worse, what if we can?

The late Mrs. N. was one of the finest people you’ll find: a world-renowned scholar with the highest personal qualities who generously shared herself with students, colleagues, and country. I came to work for her, and soon, I am grateful to say, we became great friends. One day some years later, after I had gone into the seminary, she asked me to tell her some things to read about the Bible and Christianity. Of Jewish heritage, she told me she thought it was about time she do this; these were things she should know something about.

Would-be evangelists and friends do not get an invitation like this every day. She and I agreed to read the Bible independently and get together when schedules permitted over the course of the next few months. At one of these get-togethers she turned to me and said, "You know, Bob, this is all interesting and important. It’s good. But, in all honesty, I just can’t see how I need God."

This was not spiritual bravado. Here was someone who, while not necessarily asking to be converted, approached hearing about the Christian gospel in good faith and openness. And what did I say? What do we Christians say to a question like this?

In that moment I was mindful of two traditional responses. I could have celebrated with her the good things in her rich life, then gone on to suggest that, despite all these riches, there is still something more that she needs, which (only) Jesus/God can provide. Or I could have invited her to look at the riches of her life and ask herself, really, what ultimately they all amount to since, one day, they will all be gone. Then I could have gone on to tell her that the only thing that counts is one’s relation with God, and for that to be OK she needs Jesus. In that moment I was aware that I, like many before me, had at my disposal two ways to try to show her how she did indeed need God.

But in that opportunity I found myself saying nothing. As I say, it was not because my mind went blank. Nor was it because my potential responses lacked value. But somehow, in the moment, neither seemed the thing to say. Even at the time, and many times since, I have asked myself why I said nothing. I could tell myself that sometimes to say nothing shows acceptance of what another says, that to say anything at all sounds like a belittling of another’s thinking. But I knew Mrs. N. would not take it so. She knew my respect for her. Besides, she is a person who genuinely wants to know and who delights in the intellectual give-and-take required.

In trying to put my finger on it, I have come to see that what stopped me from saying anything was an awareness I could not then articulate. If I had used either of these traditional responses we would not get anywhere, even if—especially if—I had been able to convince her that she needed God. We would not touch what the Christian gospel is talking about at all. Instead I would have made it harder to hear what the Christian gospel is talking about—in fact, harder to hear, period.

For despite coming from different directions, neither response calls on her to hear anything different from what she—and so many of us like her—already hear. The conversation starts and finishes on already established turf: the turf of being OK/saved/ fulfilled/happy by having needs met. To take up either set of responses only involves us in a sort of auction with other ideas that hold out promise of bringing us what we need. Different ideas simply offer greater or lesser promises; they simply raise the stakes of what needs we have and how they can be met. One says, Change the way I suggest and you’ll have a secure income. Another says, Change my way and you’ll know meaningful relationships. A third says, Change the way I recommend and you’ll find peace of mind. Still others offer happiness . . . fulfillment . . . freedom from guilt . . . heaven.

That is, we hear whatever the Christian gospel may be saying as a subset of something else which we already believe fulfills/ saves/OKs us: in this case, having our needs met.

We hear it like this: I have to have my needs met. Everyone has needs that need to be met. If the Christian gospel (or Richard Simmons or meditation or productive mutual funds) will help me do that, fine, I’ll consider taking it up. If it won’t, well, I won’t. No offense, but why should I? Why would anyone take up something that would not meet his or her needs? How could I bring myself to do something like that? I just can’t see what use it is to me. How could it have a place in my life?

Needs come in a vast range: physical, emotional, spiritual, individual and communal, the need for fulfillment or being productive or happy. Needs can expand and evolve. We are always open to hearing about new needs we may not have imagined we had and about new ways to meet them. There are those apologists for the Christian gospel who would find an opening to evangelize by reminding us we set too much stock on material needs and do not attend to our real (spiritual) needs. They speak as if they think they are making progress with us. But are they not simply operating with their version of the same message we already believe: that we must have our needs met?

When we hear to ourselves, If the Christian gospel will help me meet my needs, I’ll consider taking it up; if not, I won’t, which is negotiable and which is not: the meeting of needs or whatever the Christian gospel is talking about? In which do we trust to make ourselves OK/ fulfilled/happy: having our needs met or what the Christian gospel is talking about?

Is it any wonder so many of us Christians shrink from evangelizing? What the Christian gospel is talking about sounds negotiable even to ourselves—and with no alternative seemingly possible. Unable to express the gospel so that it sounds other than trumpable and dismissible, we can begin to doubt we even have faith. Or could.

Imagine hearing the other way around! Imagine hearing in such a way that it is getting needs met, or making a difference or Change! that sounds negotiable—and it is Jesus and the Christian gospel that do not sound negotiable! We all know the immediate, powerful way the prospect of having our needs met sounds to us. It does not seem as if it has to be interpreted to us through something else. Imagine hearing what the Christian gospel is talking about like that, in terms of its own. In fact, is this not what hearing what the Christian gospel is talking about means? Indeed, this is what hearing means, period: hearing such that what the Christian gospel is talking about sounds like that. Hearing this way how would everything sound?

The title of this book, Hear the Difference? is offered as a quadruple entendre. It refers to the discerning of distinctions between one idea and another. In addition, Hear the difference? is what we might ask of someone who has just put a favorite CD on our new stereo. That is, we are asking, Hear the difference? Hear how everything sounds? It is the phrase the doctor would direct to his patient for whom he has just installed a hearing aid. "Hear the difference? How does everything sound now? Third, Hear the difference?" bespeaks not only the sense of what difference there is but also what difference it makes in the one hearing. Finally, dare I suggest that with Hear the Difference? we might hear together something about the Difference, in all The Difference’s Otherness: God? For what the Christian gospel is talking about is this Difference. It is all a matter of this Difference, The One Who is all the difference and Who makes difference. Hearing in the

Spirit of this Difference, everything is different.

Is it hard to imagine hearing like this? Is it, however, less hard to hear how we would-be evangelists may make it harder to hear, even while we think we are making it easier? When, for example, we frame what the Christian gospel is talking about in terms of getting our needs met, we render it a mere version of something else. We are no longer talking at the level of all-the-difference. We, and those hearing us, may hear that we are talking where we should be because when we talk in terms of getting our needs met we certainly sound like we are talking at the most basic level. For we do have to get our needs met, do we not? Imagine hearing ourselves talking at a level that is somehow more basic than what we touch when we talk about getting needs met? Even our notion of basic becomes redefined, now in terms of something different.

It is a matter of hearing not only what the Christian gospel is talking about; it is a matter of hearing according to what the Christian gospel is talking about.

Let’s say you are a successful developer who has finally landed the prime property you’ve been eyeing for so long. You and your partner have dreamed about this day. You’ve already mapped out plans for this property, just in case you ever got it. Now you can put it all into effect.

And then, one morning, your partner comes into the office all excited about some new plans he has which, he crows, will be even better than what you’d drawn up together before. You get excited too; you listen.

You can’t believe your ears. Now he doesn’t want to drain the small pond, and he wants to leave some of the scrubby woods untouched. Now too he wants to put up smaller units. The return on the property will be significantly smaller and slower in coming. And he is excited about plans like these! It doesn’t make any business sense at all; it seems disjointed; you don’t even want to listen to it.

Has your partner suddenly become a bad businessman? No, he has suddenly become an environmentalist. He now not only hears what environmentalism is talking about; he hears according to what environmentalism is talking about. To someone who hears according to what environmentalism says your partner’s new plans for the land can seem obvious and necessary. But to someone who does not hear this way, his plans only sound like such an incomprehensibly bad version of business. Your partner does not sound like he is in the real world.

How does everything sound when we hear another way, a way which right now we cannot detect because there seems no other way to hear than the one we know?

Perhaps what you are hearing now does not sound very good. For indeed what we are talking about is not merely a matter of taking up this or that idea. It is instead a matter of hearing everything differently—in fact, hearing in a way which currently does not appear to exist. It means orienting oneself to the world differently—in a way which at present seems like striking out into the unknown.

Or do we have a sense of this difference already? After all, all this does sound different. Real different. Like not of this world. Or at least not of real, everyday life. And because it does not sound like real everyday life, it also sounds, insubstantial, not solid—hence, less-than-basic. We even hear in it therefore the sound of something faintly unwanted, something we would have to shift gears to start to take up—if we wanted to make such an effort.

We are all able to do anything and everything in everyday life, and to talk about it, hearing as we do, without any reference to whatever the Christian gospel is talking about. We learn self-esteem, find fulfillment, and contribute greatly to society—without as much as with any reference to Jesus. If we find cause to make a change—switch jobs, lose weight, stop drinking—any number of us do it without any appeal to Jesus. Some of us even reform our lives to live with love, compassion, self-sacrifice and the ability to cope with death (virtues that might seem particularly Christian) while explicitly repudiating Jesus. It is not as if, unless Christians call us, we will never be served with calls to love others, feed the starving, house the homeless, or do away with abuse. We’ll hear them, and we’ll respond. Individually, but also collectively, we cope; we even excel. We find things that work for us in any number of ways.

To be called to hear otherwise than we do carries with it, then, the sense of requiring that our lives, life as we know it, be broken into. We can feel ourselves intruded upon, asked to be persuaded, perhaps in an unwanted way, from outside. In short, we brace ourselves to be evangelized. Cannot you, the developer, imagine yourself about to be evangelized by your newly environmentalist partner? The very image of evangelizing itself is of two Scripture-toting suits you do not know coming from who-knows-where out there to ring your doorbell and interrupt your vacuuming or TV football game to get you to talk about something you were not thinking about at all as you went about living.

But, surely, that is the trick: to take something which sounds different and get it across? To make what the Christian gospel is saying sound other than remote and foreign? We’ve got to . . . —the words come out without our even having to think about it—put it in terms of everyday life. Make it real.

Churches of every stripe today are rushing to dedicate themselves to doing this very thing. Even if they do not do it very well, at least they are recognizing it needs to be done. Finally, eh? What took them so long? How could they not see it? For, frankly, what else is there to be done? Not to try to put it in terms of everyday life conjures up everybody’s worst nightmare of a sermon. I know that when I was in the ministry I heard and felt the call to put it in terms of everyday life, and I tried to follow it.

But now I am persuaded that putting it in terms of everyday life is precisely what we would-be evangelists for what the Christian gospel is talking about must not be dedicated to. For one thing, people do not need any help doing this: this is what we all already do. We put what the Christian gospel is talking about, like anything else that we hear, in terms we already know. That’s what we do when we hear it as a version of Change! or getting our needs met—or happiness or success or peace or any other term.

That is what the developer partner did. His environmentalist partner had put it in terms of everyday life—very concrete terms like ponds, housing units and return on investment—but that did not mean he was heard. For the developer partner then did what we all already do: he put these terms in terms of other terms of everyday life, in his case development terms. In so doing he did not hear what environmentalism was talking about. He heard only an unappealing version of what development said. He continued to hear as he already had. To hear what and according to what the Christian gospel is talking about, then, is not simply a matter of putting it in terms of everyday life.

What’s more, does not the sheer fact of our rushing to put what the Christian gospel is talking about in terms of everyday life reinforce the impression that we are dealing in what is negotiable vs. what is not? Those who preach self-esteem, for example, do not seem to feel the need to put what they wish to talk about in terms of the Christian gospel. Evidently they already talk in terms of everyday life. They already talk in a non-negotiable sort of way while we do not. And yet, to someone who does not already hold esteem of the self, the self is about the last place he or she would look for value. The self does not automatically carry esteem. What the advocates of self-esteem mean by self has had to be taught. No one has ever seen an id or super-ego or an Inner Child. Yet have the advocates for self-esteem or psychology or pop-psychology simply found and now communicated to the rest of us terms for observing all of life which previously we did not notice or use? Have they found, and described something that is other than negotiable? Or have they succeeded in making their terms for hearing all of life sound that way?

What, then, about inviting others to hear in the terms in which the Christian gospel talks? But do we Christians hear according to them ourselves? Or do we instead hear simply according to terms which arise with or without what the Christian gospel is talking about?

The situation reminds me of the time I attended a question/ answer session with the author of a well-received book about pastoral work. In it he identified nine styles of pastoral leadership, such as the orchestra conductor, the prison warden and seven others, and argued that at various times the pastor needed to adopt one or more of these in his or her work. I followed what he was saying, but I asked him, "Is there no pastoral style per se? That is, turn it around. Does the orchestra conductor ever need to adopt a pastoral style, and if he does, what is it? We seem to be able to picture the prison warden, the orchestra conductor and the other seven clearly enough to use them as models. But what are the marks of pastoral leadership? Doesn’t it have any of its own?» The author was at a loss. He could not find anything to answer. In fact, he could not even follow what I was talking about. He simply could not hear it. It is as if we Christians do not hear or appreciate what we have. And if we do not, will those we address?

It is not as if no one ever heard the terms Jesus Christ or God or pastors or sin—at least any less than they have heard self-esteem or Inner Child. But somehow we treat them as if they are talking about something less-than basic. Basic-sounding terms might seem to equate with things tangible: shelter, food, health. But what of family, work, relationships, meaning or health? Or do the terms chosen by which we are going to assess life come along with the way according to which we are going to do the assessing? Are the terms selected into which it is to be put themselves an expression of what is basic?

Terms of everyday life are not all the same size. Some are larger and more encompassing than others. They do not all operate at the same level. The environmentalist partner put things in terms of ponds and investment returns, but he was still not heard. His developer partner put these terms of everyday life in other terms, those of development. Perhaps we Christian evangelizers simply do not move past the first level of terms to deal with the next level of terms of everyday life. When