My Mom used to say, “Talking to you is like talking to a wall.” The truth is, that description fits more seasons of my life than I would like to admit. I would like to think that changed when I became a Christian, but I suspect a few people might still have their doubts. There is a saying about graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary: “You can always tell a Dallas man, but you cannot tell him very much.” It does not take much pride to close our eyes and ears to the truth that surrounds us every day. Jeremiah later says, “the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can know it?” That line lands a little too close to home. Self-deception is not a rare talent; it seems to come quite naturally. My Mom’s words, spoken with frustration and weariness, echo the deeper problem: sometimes we are not just hard to talk to, we are unwilling to hear.
You can sense the same frustration in the prophet himself. In Jeremiah 6:10 he asks, “To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the LORD is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.” The image is striking. It is not merely that they will not listen; they cannot. The translator’s handbook explains that their stubborn refusal has hardened into inability. That sounds familiar in everyday life. Relationships can reach a point where conversations feel like speeches delivered to a brick wall, followed by polite nodding and no actual change. I say this carefully, because I have played both roles in that scene. Pride has a way of digging in its heels, convincing us that we are right, even when the evidence is lining up against us like witnesses at a trial. It shows up in families, in churches, in workplaces, and even in quiet moments when no one else is around. As Roger Miller sang, “Two people, each having so much pride inside, neither side forgives.” It is a quiet kind of damage, but it spreads widely.
The New Testament sheds light on both the problem and the hope. Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15), reminding us that hearing is more than sound reaching the ear. It is a matter of the heart. Paul explains, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God… and he is not able to understand them” (1 Corinthians 2:14). That inability sounds very much like Jeremiah’s description. Yet God does not leave us there. “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 4:6). What pride resists, grace can penetrate. The same God who spoke through Jeremiah opens deaf ears through Christ, not by force, but by a patient and persistent light that reaches even those who once seemed impossible to reach.