Listening is rudimentary to being a good human; it’s one of the most fundamental forms of respect. Further, it’s a basic signifier of our humility. And our wisdom: Proverbs tells us it’s only the fool that utters all his mind[1] and “He that answers a matter before listening it is a folly and shame to him.”[2]
The fundamental loss of human children of God, created in His image, listening to one another is a primary contributor to America’s polarization. As musician Michael W. Smith observes in his his autobiographical The Way of the Father: Lessons from My Dad, Truths About God:
So much of the conversation today is not conversation at all, but more confrontation, manipulation, sensation, dictation, litigation, and even damnation. No matter our politics or personal beliefs, we have to listen once again and be open to having some uncomfortable dialogue, even within our own hearts.[3]
We can learn a lot about listening conversations, as well as fostering friendships that transcend polarization, from the late Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, as well as from current Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas.
Andrew MacDonald, Associate Director of the Wheaton College, Billy Graham Center shared this story about Ginsburg and Scalia’s relationship:
Revered by liberals, Ginsburg was the ideological opposite of Scalia in nearly every respect. Despite these differences, the two were ‘the best of friends,’ dating back to their time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit…
When asked how they were able to maintain a friendship despite profound differences, Ginsburg answered:
‘We know that even though we have sharp disagreements on what the Constitution means, we have a trust. We revere the Constitution and the Court, and we want to make sure that when we leave it, it will be in as good a shape as it was when we joined the Court.’
[Some have noted that unlike the friendship that Ginsberg and Scalia modeled, we are] “saturated with polarization, tribalism, power, and selfishness, we are habituated to believe the lie that the highest good is to win.”Scalia’s son recently tweeted a story about how his father would buy roses for Ginsburg for her birthday. Seeing him with the roses, Judge Jeffrey Sutton once asked, ‘So what good have all these roses done for you? Name one five-four case of any significance where you got Justice Ginsburg’s vote.’
Scalia replied, ‘Some things are more important than votes.’[4]
And here is Justice Sonia Sotomayor on her friendship with her ideological opposite, Justice Clarence Thomas:
“I have probably disagreed with him more than any other justice… and yet… he is a man who cares deeply about the court as an institution… about people… He has a very different vision than I do… but I think we share a common understanding about people and kindness towards them. That’s why I can be friends with him and still continue our daily battle over our differences of opinion in cases. But you really can’t begin to understand an adversary unless you step away from looking at their views as motivated in bad faith… until you can look at their views and think about what the human reaction is that’s motivating those views. What are they afraid of? What is it inside of them that moves them to be seeing the world in this way? You can’t begin to engage them unless you can do something about that conversation.”[5]
Be sure to watch Sotomayor’s full clip below– it’s powerful!
[1] 29:11, KJV.
[2] 18:13.
[3] Michael W. Smith with Robert Noland, The Way of the Father (Franklin, TN: KLove, 2021), 142.
[4] I found this story originally at https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2020/september/some-thing-more-friendship-of-ginsburg-scalia.html but is no longer available at that link.
[5] Sotomayor made these remarks on June 17, 2022: https://www.instagram.com/tv/Ce61ZmGF9TA/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=