Tag Archive - conversations

Anxiety Makes Humanity Unique

March 29, 2012 in Ministry-Theology, The Anxious Christian, Therapy-Psychology with 0 Comments

Eric Chinski at the Paris Review, has a great interview with Brian Christian, author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive.

The article is a fascinating look at the interaction between humans, computers and AI (artificial intelligence)…and a probing look at what makes us human. Brian won ‘The Most Human Human’ award…which is basically this:

The Most Human Human is an award given out each year at the Loebner Prize, the artificial intelligence (AI) community’s most controversial and anticipated annual competition. The event is what’s called a Turing test, in which a panel of judges conducts a series of five-minute-long chat conversations over a computer with a series of real people and with a series of computer programs pretending to be people by mimicking human responses. The catch, of course, is that the judges don’t know at the start who’s who, and it’s their job in five minutes of conversation to try to find out.

But in the midst of this article, this statement jumped off the page at me…

 

“humans appear to be the only things anxious about what makes them unique”

What if anxiety not only makes us human, but what if anxiety is a gift? A gift that reminds us of our humanity. A gift that reminds us of our freedom. A gift that reminds us to pursue the God who uniquely created us. Created us to live with anxiety in order that we may continually seek after and depend on him.

Are You Truly Listening to Your Spouse

October 20, 2009 in Marriage-Family, Therapy-Psychology with 12 Comments

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[image by ky_olsen]

One of the things that was sort of a wake up call for me when I got married were the number of times that I thought I was really listening to my wife, but she would retort with “you aren’t listening to me.”

Inside, my pride was telling me that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I mean, come on. I was a pastor and listened to people for a living (pastors can sometimes been notoriously bad listeners). And I was training to become a therapist…who listens more than a therapist?  And after all, were all those people wrong who would tell me I was a great listener?  That’s what I was thinking inside my head. And of course those thoughts stayed inside my head, as should many thoughts that came racing across my brain during arguments with my wife.

But as time goes on I am beginning to see that what we often see as listening is not really listening at all. We assume because we hear, that therefore we have truly listened. But hearing and listening are not the same thing as most of you can attest to.

The longer I’m married, the more people I counsel, and the more material I read, I am convicted that we are a society that is not very good at listening to one another.  In fact, we rarely take time to listen to ourselves, instead choosing to fill up the space with noise to keep us from having to truly reflect on what is going on inside of us.  This inability to listen to ourselves doesn’t stop with us, but carries over into our most important relationships. Continue Reading…