[bit.listserv.christia] Spiritual stories: how to listen - MJM

MJMCCULL@OWUCOMCN (Mike McCully) (02/13/90)

Ron writes:
>I have a very shocking but true story from a friend.  Her name is
>Sundaravuth from Cambodia.  Last night we were talking on the phone, and
>she was telling me that she and her sister both died at the same time---
>    "You almost died?"
>    "No, I really died!"
>    "What was it like?  Were you traveling somewhere like through
>space?"
>    "Yes."
>    "Oh, no!"  I heard a testimony from a woman on Pat Robertson's show,
>that she was falling to hell, but was saved by doctors right before she
>fell in! ... "see if this matches the description you went through.  You
>were traveling through deep space, right?"
>    "Yes."
>    "You began to feel the presence of God, you knew there was the
>Father God, there was the Holy Spirit, and there was Jesus, right?"
>    "Yeah, that's right."
>    "Then, as you were falling, you felt the presence of a devil, or
>Satan!"
>    "O MY GOD!!" she responded in terror!
>    "Are you serious?  Then you saw the heavy crude metal doors?"
>    "O MY GOD!  OH NO!!!" she responded even more terrified!
>...    She explained to me that her sister Suntara was very weak, Vuth was
>not very weak, but her sister was extremely weak and sick.  They were
>holding hands, and Suntara died, but Vuth went with her!  So they were
>together falling in deep space.  "We were going together to heaven or
>hell..."  She was not sure what to call it.  "My sister said the people
>were burning!  She shouted, `NO!! I'M NOT READY TO GO YET!!!'  Then we
>came back!"
>...    They woke up from death, but they did not understand what they went
>through.  Vuth did not understand what it was until I explained to her,
>"That is hell!"

There is a problem with this story, which reduces its persuasiveness.
My comments are not a personal attack, but instead I think this is a
problem that we all have to watch out for when talking with people
about their spiritual experiences (or other unusual experiences they
have had).  I'm glad Ron gave us an example of the problem to discuss.

The problem is that we might actually "put ideas into people's heads"
when discussing their experiences with them.  By asking "leading"
questions (questions which suggest an answer), the person with whom
we are talking may go along with our suggested answer and actually
develop a false memory of what happened.  Perhaps our question just
stimulates a real memory, but we don't know for sure.  This makes our
story less persuasive when we tell it to others.

Let me give some non-religious examples before coming back to the story
above.  In one experiment, a professor was teaching his class
when suddenly a masked man ran into the classroom and started
struggling with the professor, and then the professor managed to drive
the masked man out of the classroom.  Next the professor revealed
that this was only an act, in order to test the students' powers
of observation.  The students were asked to fill out a survey on
what they had observed, including the question "Was the masked man
holding his gun in his left hand or his right hand?"  Most students
answered "Left" or "right", when in reality the man *had no gun*.
By asking a question which led students to believe there was a gun,
they started to "remember" seeing one.  The survey was written
this way on purpose, to teach a lesson, but if the intention had
been to get at what the students actually observed, the questions
should have been more neutral like "Describe in your own words what
you saw", not questions which suggested an answer.

Another example is the McMartin child abuse trial which just ended
in California.  The McMartins may have been guilty, but they were
acquitted in part because the prosecuting attorneys asked the
children leading questions, and sometimes the children "remembered"
examples of child abuse which never happened.  This made the jurors
doubt all the stories of the children, even the ones which may
have been true, and so the jurors were not convinced beyond a reasonable
doubt that the McMartins were guilty.  Yet another example involves an article
I saw in _Omni_ on all the people who when hypnotized "remember" being
kidnapped by space aliens; it was shown that the hypnotist was not asking
semi-neutral questions like "What did the aliens look like?" but instead
"Did the aliens have big eyes? Were the aliens bald?" The people answered,
"Yes!" (note that I am personally skeptical whether most people saw any aliens
at all, but am just using this as an illustration).

In the same way, in the above story Ron did not let Sundaravuth
tell the story in her own words, but suggested to her a lot of things
that she might have seen and then she remembered seeing them.  Please
don't misunderstand me:  maybe Sundaravuth really did see these things
and Ron was just jogging her memory.  But we don't know for sure,
because of the way the information was obtained.  A person skeptical
of Christianity would not be convinced; a failure in witnessing.

Why is it hard for us to sit quietly and listen to the
person's own words?  Because we may already have a definite opinion
about what happens in these kinds of situations (or whether they
are possible at all, like in the alien example).  Ron said she
didn't completely understand what happened to her and so he was
helping her interpret what happened.  This seems like a caring thing
to do, and I don't see anything
too wrong with it.  But I firmly believe we should normally suggest our
own interpretations only after hearing the full story first.
To use a phrase I was often told as a child, "hold your horses"
(be patient) before rushing in with your interpretation,
for the sake of truth and so the story becomes more persuasive when
you retell it.

Again, this was not a personal attack, and I hope someone found it helpful.

In Christ's love,
Mike