I was in college when I started watching the TV series “Friends.” It had a good cast, it was funny, and the show perfected the “will they, won’t they?” dynamic where you weren’t sure whether a couple would get together or not.
A big part of that dynamic was the on again off again dance between Ross Gellar and Rachel Green. Since the show is twenty years old, it’s probably okay to give you a spoiler: They finally do get together.
I remember getting frustrated at how Ross and Rachel would interact. Sometimes they’d be on good terms, other times angry with each other or jealous with each other. When they argued I’d think it would be so much easier if they just learned to communicate.
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Engaging others with wisdom
As we move on in our series on Practical Wisdom from the book of James, our passage today would have been very beneficial for Ross and Rachel. More important, it’s very valuable for us. We’ll look at how to engage with others with wisdom.
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
James 1:19
That tagline, “engage with others with wisdom,” is important because there are a lot of different ways we can interact with others. If we want to do so with wisdom, we are given this simple principle: Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
When introducing this series on practical wisdom last week, we emphasized that these were the words of God. And here, God is like an inventor who made us and gave us a manual on how to use what he made. Out of knowing us, he gives some important principles for how we interact with others.
We’ve experienced when someone fails to use wisdom in their actions. We know what it’s like when someone doesn’t listen, or they interrupt us. Whether intentionally or accidentally, someone may have said something hurtful, or maybe we were on the receiving end of a short fuse.
At the same time, we’ve all experienced people who’ve shown God’s wisdom in how they interact with us. They’ve listened to you. They let you know you are valued by letting you know you were heard. Maybe they expressed deep and meaningful things or showed patience with us. They carefully chose words rather than just blurting things out.
Engaging wisely with others means being quick to listen
This idea of being quick to listen can be challenging when you’re a yapper. I know this, because if you give me enough caffeine I can yap with the best of them.
James asks us to let people be heard. We might need to ask: Am I someone who hears others?
Listening today is becoming a lost art. It doesn’t have to be. That’s sad when most people want to be heard. They need to know they’re important enough to be heard or listened to. Too few want to hang around enough to listen.
I encourage you to take time with someone and just listen. Consciously listen with one purpose: to hear what they’re saying. Don’t interrupt, don’t think of your respond. Just listen. Just hear them.
It’s difficult to do that for a number of reasons. We feel the need to interrupt because we’ve already determined what we think they’re saying. We have this need to make it about ourselves. Our struggle with hearing them can be difficult when we’re more focused on figuring out what we’re going to say.
How would it make a difference if we just listened? How much less likely are we to get into an argument? Think about how conflicts can be managed, or how cared for and loved people feel when we simply hear them.
Think about times you’ve felt like all you needed was to be heard. Remember a time someone really sincerely listened to you. Think about the frustration you feel when they don’t listen. Use that so you don’t create the same frustration in someone else.
Engaging wisely with others means being slow to speak
Have you ever said something that got you in trouble? What happened there? Was it because you spoke too soon?
I remember when I was a kid, and I’m not sure why but I was angry with her. At that time, she called for me and I said “WHAT!?” in a sharp and angry way.
Time stood still and the earth stopped moving. My mom is a strong black woman, and I won’t tell you what happened next. Let’s just say that I never spoke to her that way again.
Responding slowly helps us distinguish between giving helpful words and harmful words. That’s harder to do when we speak quickly.
Studies show that it takes roughly 600 milliseconds for a thought to become a word. It only takes 600 milliseconds to say something harmful and wield powerful words that cut deeply.
Go back to what we said about God knowing us. He knows our impulses. He knows the power of words, and so encourages us to speak slowly.
We can be nervous in a conversation. The power of silence can bring us through that.
We feel the need to come up with the right words when someone grieves. Silence and presence are often much better.
Someone shares what’s on their heart. Or maybe you’re in an argument. The things we think we must say may not be helpful in those moments. Listening and silence are powerful in that they let us process what’s happening. They can keep us from saying something we regret.
Engaging wisely with others means being slow to anger.
The last part of verse 19 said to be slow to anger. To grasp the fullness of what James says here, we need to dive into verse 20
because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
James 1:20
James gives us the fullness of being slow to anger by giving us the why.
Here’s a controversial take: I don’t think anger is a bad emotion. Most of my life I felt it was a bad thing. Maybe it’s because I’ve experienced the destructive kind of anger, but counselling and seminars on understanding emotions have helped me see anger as neutral.
Anger can be constructive or destructive. James uses the term “human anger,” and I think it shows a contrast between Godly anger and human anger.
James didn’t tell us not to be angry, but to be slow to anger. Ultimately he’s telling us to be like God in our anger.
The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
Psalm 1:45
Many characterize God in the Old Testament as an angry God. But his anger shows a contrast between Godly anger and human anger. It wasn’t a temper tantrum or inability to control emotions.
What angered God? The destructiveness that resulted when people turned away. Injustice in the way people treat one another. It was an anger that came out of his love, out of paying attention to what’s happening, and a desire for what’s best.
A Godly anger can produce the righteousness that God desires, when it returns people to Him, when it stops injustice, rights wrongs, and builds up. Godly anger is constructive anger.
Human anger tends toward destruction. It’s often the explosive anger that has harmed many of us. Maybe it’s a passive aggressive anger that responds to an issue without fully responding to it. Maybe it’s the slow boiling anger that builds, or that punishes others by one’s absence. Sometimes it’s a stubborn anger that won’t be moved.
And what does this have to do with getting rid of moral filth?
Therefore, because of all this, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
James 1:21
I have to admit that when I first read this verse, I was confused. It felt really random and sporadic, intense but out of place.
Think about this in the context of engaging wisely with people. Being quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger are so important that we need to remove anything that would get in the way of doing so.
See, we read the advice to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, and we think maybe we can put that up on the wall on a post-it note to remind us. But it doesn’t always work that well, does it? That’s because something’s in the way.
In Zechariah and in Collosians we see this concept of removing filthy clothes. Zechariah speaks of a man in filthy clothes standing before the angel of the Lord. The angel instructs people to remove those clothes, then says “See I have taken away your sin.” Paul talked in Colossians about stripping away the old nature.
Seeing what’s next in Colossians 3 and Zechariah 3 can help us with what’s happening here. It didn’t just end with stripping away the filth. The filthy clothes were replaced, symbolizing being clothed with righteousness.
The new clothing in our case is cultivating a walk with Jesus. Walking closer with him grants him permission to be the master gardener in our lives. We allow him to remove the rocks and weeds, to take away the corruption, evil desires, greed, and selfishness that interfere with engaging wisely with others.
Incorporating these principles in our lives
We’ve all experienced lack of wisdom in how we engage. We’ve known people who engage poorly with us, and we’ve struggled ourselves with how we interact.
The series we just completed was on the art of neighboring. We want to be a people who love our neighbors as ourselves. Our vision as a church is to be a neighborhood that reflects the love and hope of Jesus.
A key to putting all of this in action is to engage wisely with others. We can reflect the relationship we have with Jesus when we:
are quick to listen,
slow to speak,
and slow to anger.