When I worked for the railways I had a set of bright orange earmuffs that made me look like Christopher Robin’s teddy bear. Everyone else had blue or black, but mine were orange! Was this a problem? Well yes. It was a time when hearing protection was only just surfacing as an important issue so there was a degree of peer pressure related to the wearing of them or not. However, being young I dutifully turned myself into a psychedelic pinup boy for hearing protection.
Many years ago we met a family with a profoundly deaf child. By profound I mean she couldn’t hear anything at all. We had a mind-expanding discussion on what it might be like to hear nothing from infancy. Language is not language as the hearing know it. Sounds are not sounds as hearing people experience them. A profoundly deaf person’s world of silence and vibration creates a culture that is not just different from the world of sound, but is completely “other”.
I had never considered about this before, but it makes sense. Being blind means being unable to see, but blindness does not necessarily exclude conversation and communication, deafness often does; it seriously reduces the community in which meaningful communication takes place.
Think about it for a moment. Imagine not knowing the sound of a bird, the rattle of cicadas, the roar of ocean waves, or a human voice - only a form of silence. Actually it’s impossible to comprehend. Those of us who hear have those sounds imprinted in our minds; we can’t imagine not knowing them.
It is surprising how we take hearing for granted. There’s no obvious reason to think about hearing, yet it’s an essential part of being together. When a person can’t hear exclusion is almost immediate and so too is relational separation. The word sounds of relationship fail.
We Christians often talk about the Word of God. Unfortunately and catastrophically we turn the Word of God into little more than ink on a page; meager words to be read, learned and understood. Yet the biblical idea of “Word” ought not conjure a written or printed thing, but rather a sound. After all, that what words are – sounds!
Words that are heard are relational. Words that are written are mere information. Sound requires the intensity of listening. A love letter might be written, but the one reading can hear the voice of the writer. They can sense the sound.
The Bible refers over and over to hearing God not reading about God. Hearing infers relationship or connection. In hearing we “know” and are “known”. We do not blandly “know about”.
Knowledge does not equate to a deep bond. When my wife and kids speak to me there is an eruption of relationship – a written note is not the same.
In the Christian covenant the Bible is God’s Word – but it must be heard, not merely read. Otherwise we become deaf to God. To hear God’s voice through the ink of scripture requires prayer not just analysis.
Digby Wilkinson © 2008