Be in a hurry to listen

This week's verses are James 1:19-20:

Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters! Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.

These are revolutionary verses. They fly in the face of modern "wisdom," with its focus on emotional displays and dramatic, often violent, outbursts. Modern morality teaches us to go on the offensive when we see injustice or think someone is wrong. We are encouraged to insult them, yell at them, embarrass them, get them fired from their job, break the windows of their house, organize a protest, burn some businesses, throw rocks and caustic liquids at the police who show up to restore order, and worse. We put the megaphone in someone's face and keep shouting till it runs out of batteries.

Watch TV for a little while, or listen to talk radio, or read the editorials that are the news, and you will see it over and over. People roll their eyes at each other. They interrupt each other mid-sentence to shout over top of the person they're talking to. Anger is the currency of the new righteousness; the more offended and overwhelmed you are by injustice, the more righteous you must be. Eventually you end up with the sort of exquisite, highly refined moral sensitivity that causes you to be unable to restrain yourself from setting fire to a man's car based on what bumper stickers he has.

But this isn't the righteousness described in the Bible. That should be common sense, right? I mean, how many churches have stained glass pictures of Jesus screaming in the face of a Roman centurion? And yet when it comes to discourse, we default to what is modeled by the culture of the world around us, and not to what is modeled for us by the Bible.

James says to be quick to listen. How often do we just listen to someone who has some seemingly crackpot viewpoint on something? How often are we in a hurry to listen to something that disagrees with what we already believe, or which we feel is wrong or immoral? Next time you're around someone whose views or values are different from yours, and they start running through their talking points, just keep your mouth shut and listen. It's hard, isn't it? Bad habits don't die easy.

James also says to be slow to speak. Once you've got the listening thing down, try this. It's the next level. We all want to talk. Especially in a heated discussion with lots of people. Every dog in the kennel has to bark! But James says to be slow to speak. Try pausing instead of immediately speaking your mind when someone is saying something upsetting.

If you're slow to speak, you're probably not interrupting the person you're having a conversation with. And if you're not interrupting, you're in a better position to hear what they're saying and to understand it. Sometimes that alone is enough to keep you from getting angry. Most of the time when people get angry at each other it's over a misunderstanding. But if you're not listening, you're probably not understanding, and if you're talking, you're probably not listening.

So what if you still get angry at what someone is saying? James says to be slow to anger. (Kind of like God, right? Slow to anger, quick to forgive?) So if you feel yourself getting angry, take it slow. Let it build a bit. Give the other person a chance to talk you down or talk you out of it. How do you want to be? "Righteous" or Christ-like?

James says the righteousness of God is not accomplished through human anger. That's a hard pill to swallow in a world where we're graded on our passion. But look at what Jesus endured, if you don't think it's possible. That should be our model, not the people we see on TV.

Here's something to try this week. Watch TV and see how people talk to each other. Look at the body language. Look to see if they seem to be listening and digesting what each other are saying. Look at how disagreement is being handled. Look at the words being used. Are they neutral words, or are they meant to provoke a reaction? Just take some time and observe.

And then take a similar amount of time and read through the book of Acts in the Bible. Look at how people react to each other. Look at how disagreement is handled. Are the people tearing their clothes and throwing rocks and dirt the good guys or the bad guys?

And then finally take a similar amount of time and look at yourself. How do you react to other people? What do you do when you disagree? Are you more like the TV, or more like the people in Acts? If you're more like the people on TV, you're probably not accomplishing a lot of God's righteousness. Maybe you should read more of the Bible instead. That's something you should be in a hurry to listen to!