Thoughts on James 1:19-21 (Part I)

19You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

James 1:19-21 NRSV

Welcome back to our study of James. It has been awhile, so I encourage you to go back and refer to previously written posts on James (I believe the last verse set has like 100 parts…)

Let’s start with an imperative from James, “You must understand this, my beloved:” This wording reminds me of what my dad would say to me before I found myself in trouble, “Son, you need to listen to me…” The same familial endearment is present here, James is insisting that his beloved flock listen to what he has to say.

Just as a brief review, verses 3-18 were about suffering (particularly persecution), your perspective in the middle of it, and how to deal with it as a believer. It is then natural for James to rebuke what he saw as an improper reaction to suffering:

Anger

This is understandable considering the consequences of belief meant some serious emotional trauma including the loss and/or death of loved ones, ruining of reputations, the seizure of property and other terrible things. During this period, this was mostly an issue with Jewish religious persecution, but later it would be Gentile Rome who would become the most serious oppressor. Either way, suffering costs the believer dearly and it is reasonable to expect some anger and resentment to boil up.

This can also be seen in general actions of believers today against mild persecution; so many Western Christians become angry because society does not embrace Jesus Christ. Christians in many parts of the US are more angry than joyful; I believe James would have a serious disagreement with them. Anger is not the right response for the Christian who has seen suffering through the lens of joy and identified with the afflictions of Jesus Christ.

James’ response guides his flock in another direction, “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” Why does James tell his flock to listen first, how does this relate to persecution? I believe that when we stop to listen, we also understand and can at least sympathize with our attacker. When I stop to listen to Candice, I am far less likely to become defensive or to make assumptions about what she is trying communicate. When we stop to listen to those who persecute and dislike us, then we can better see how they view us and we can also receive insight from the Holy Spirit on how to approach them. When we stop to listen, we allow God and others to break into our often selfish, egocentric thought patterns.

But there is also a second part; we don’t just stop to listen, we refuse to open our mouth. At my wedding reception, we were already having a stressful day and I had not seen the wedding cake at that point. The first time I saw it, I blurted out, “I don’t like the cake.” Well, this may have been a true and accurate assessment of the cake, but it was too much for my poor wife who soon burst into tears. If I had held my tongue, that could have been avoided. So many times when circumstances go awry or when people hurt us, we want to lash out or speak out; those are the times that we should normally keep our mouths shut.

As a general rule:

If you feel like you should say something; do not say anything. If you are trying to justify not saying something; say it, but with love and grace.

When we are quick to listen and slow to open our mouths, our angry reactions are also markedly lower. If I am too busy focusing on you, and I am keeping my mouth shut, then my selfish tendency to be angry does not have a place to come out. The problem occurs when I am slow to listen and quick to speak, then there is normally a ton of hurt, bitterness, and anger to go around.

This selfishness check is good, because the kind of anger that comes out of these situations is normally self-centered and it “does not produce God’s righteousness.” There is a righteous anger that is tempered by love and mercy, but normally when we get angry from hurt or being maligned it is because we see it as a personal affront/rejection. We are hurt, so we want to hurt others; this kind of anger is ungodly and has no place as a reaction to suffering in the Christian experience.

There is a second part to James’ thought, but that will have to wait for next time.

Williebemacin by William McPherson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.