The Courage to Listen--January 17, 2022

The Courage to Listen--January 17, 2022

"You must understand this, my beloved; let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness." [James 1:19-20]

Let's be clear about a few things today.

For starters: if, hypothetically, my car doesn't want to start in the morning, no amount of kicking the doors, pounding on the steering wheel, or shouting at the chassis will get it moving. The energy of my temper tantrum simply cannot be converted into forward momentum or internal combustion. In fact, it would be accurate to say that a car is powered by an entirely different kind of physical energy than futile kicking and frustrated cursing. I may indeed feel upset that the car isn't starting as I find myself later and later to work, but I do need to be clear: no amount of hitting the car's doors or dashboard will translate to a purring engine.

Now, if we are clear on that much, we should say something as a corollary. Just as my personal meltdown is of an entirely different kind of energy from the precisely timed controlled explosions inside the cylinders of a car's engine, my anger is simply useless in terms of generating God's kind of justice... God's kind of righteousness (side note: the Greek word James and the New Testament both use that is translated "righteousness" is also the same word for "justice." These are not separate categories or ideas in Greek).

In other words, my outraged bluster powers God's justice as well as my punching the car generates internal combustion. Which is to say, not at all.

James here says that in about as plain a way as you can say it here in these verses, but it almost seems that we don't really believe him on that point. (Funny how religious folks can be so very particular about "getting back to the Bible" but when the Bible says something we do not want to have to deal with, like exposing the impotence of our anger, we ignore it or pretend the Bible is talking to someone else.) Somehow, most everybody in our culture has bought into the damnably stupid thinking that if someone else upsets me, I must "save face" by unleashing my unbridled anger at them so that I won't look "weak." We have swallowed the lie, hook, line, and sinker, that "real" power has to shout angry words back when someone has done or said something to offend you, or that the only way to appear "tough" is to keep insisting on getting the last word, the last glare, or the last punch.

How many times have we seen or heard the teenage boy muddling his way through high school and convinced that if someone upsets him, he needs to hit first and ask questions later in order to prove himself?

How many times have we seen (or been) the one who seems so desperate to provoke a fight on social media that they keep lobbing angry words, or name-calling, or making threats and denouncements, while being totally unaware that every additional post, every additional bombastic outburst actually becomes more and more of an embarrassment, less and less persuasive, and increasingly pathetic?

How many times have we been pushed to ignore or shake our heads or debate about whether or not to respond to someone on the fringe of our circle of acquaintances because we simply couldn't believe the vitriol coming out of their mouths--the refusal to see others as made in the image of God, the refusal to hear why someone else thinks the way they do, the refusal to listen, because listening feels scary and threatening? And then--the question we never really want to ask ourselves--how many times have I said (yelled), posted, "liked", "shared" or approved of something that was so drenched in blind and futile anger that it made someone else stop listening to me? How many times has self-righteous anger on my side and self-righteous anger on someone else's side kept both of us from hearing what the other has to say?

People who might have been willing to listen to a perspective they did not share are quickly turned away and get defensive, and then they shut down any attempt to hear where you are coming from. That is to say, anger-powered outbursts of immature name-calling or threats draped in the presumption of rightness are simply impotent--they cannot accomplish anything or move a thing forward. They are the interpersonal equivalents of punching your car to make it run.

The Biblical writers offer us some counsel for when we find ourselves in such situations (and we will). While it is absolutely true that sometimes anger is the right response (like the old line says, "Hope has two lovely daughters whose names are Anger and Courage--anger at the way things are, and courage to change them"), there is a difference between anger that fuels constructive action and just plain outraged bluster. One is powerful, and the other is impotent. One comes from a place of being in tune with the Reign of God, and the other, as James says it, simply cannot produce the justice of God. Before we automatically baptize our own anger and outrage as being "the good kind," it is worth taking a moment seriously to ask whether we are fired up because are really attuned to justice, or whether we really feel insecure and threatened. Because here is a dirty little secret: most of the time, we (wrongly) assume that MY anger is always the "righteous" kind, when it is really more likely to be the "frightened bully" kind. The less I am willing to seriously look at my own anger that way to test it out, the more likely it is because I already know that I am just a scared, cornered bully in that moment and don't want to have to face it.  Like James Baldwin says, "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

So the New Testament's James counsels us to do the brave thing and deal with that pain, by daring to listen more and speak less. When someone else is spewing something outrageous and vitriolic, it is far more effective in the long run to let their own impotent rage hoist them by their own petard, rather than returning fire on their terms. Once you engage someone else's impotent anger on their own terms, you have already given away the contest, because impotent anger colors our vision so that we can only see ourselves as "winning" the argument and automatically dismiss the other as a "loser." It's like declaring that sky is red and then putting on red-tinted lenses so that all you can see is red in the sky; at some point, you lose the ability to recognize that you are selectively filtering out any input to the contrary of what you already think.

When we, as James puts it, are "quick to listen," we defuse and de-escalate. So often, the impotent, car-punching, plate-throwing kind of anger comes from a place of feeling threatened or insecure, and we feel threatened when we think we are being dismissed or ignored or told we are unimportant. When someone else says something (or posts something, or tweets something, or whatever) that seems soaked in that kind of insecure anger, they are almost always spoiling for a fight--but if our response is not to return "sound and fury" in kind, to borrow Shakespeare's phrase, but rather to stop the other person in their tracks and say, "Tell me about what leads you think that," a clever thing happens. First, it refuses to accept the terms of impotent anger that this is a "fight," and second of all, it compels both the other person and you, the speaker and the listener, to think through why each of you think the way you think. It is a way of disarming someone who is expecting you to disrespect them (so that then they can feel justified in treating you or others with further disrespect), and it is a way of refusing to give them ammunition to use against you any longer.

I am reminded of something Dr. King used to say about the core philosophy of his nonviolent resistance during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. King wrote in 1957, "the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community."

That kind of response is both radical and powerful--the opposite of futile and impotent anger. The idea is not to condone or keep looking the other way when someone is boiling over with infuriated nonsense, but to engage in a way that seeks the good of all, and that allows the possibility that I might learn something myself, too. If I enter the encounter listening, then no matter what, there is the possibility of something good coming from it: either it defuses impotent anger from the person I listen to, or it compels me to hear and recognize something I did not recognize before myself. Listening is risky in that sense--it allows the possibility that I don't have all the right answers yet, and that I might need to learn something from someone I disagree with, and it also surrenders the right to hit first and ask questions later. Being "quick to listen" requires the courage to be vulnerable... and let's just be honest, most of us are simply not that brave all of the time.

James' direction is even more important when the stakes are high--when we are talking about things we hold dear, and when we are talking about our highest allegiances. Sometimes we grudgingly agree to listen on matters of no consequence--ice cream flavors, taste in music, style of clothes, or whatever--but then we think that when it comes to God, we have to shout more loudly because we have to defend God's honor. But as Stanley Hauerwas put it so well, "Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.” Or as another old line has it, you defend God the way you defend a lion--you get out of its way.

Today, we are going to run into people--some in the flesh, and some through countless screens and devices--who will strike us as impotently angry. They will be lashing out because they feel threatened (whether they know it or would say it that way or not), because they feel insecure (whether they would admit it or not), and because they feel like they have been told they do not matter (whether that is justified or not). Our calling is not to sink to the level of impotent anger. It is always to take the higher road, even when the angry shouting voices go low. That may not feel "fair," but our calling is not simply to settle for "I hit you because you hit me first," but rather the creation of the beloved community.

So when someone says something that provokes a spark of that outrage or head-shaking disgust (and that will happen, too), what if you and I dared to try what James suggests. What if we paused and listened, thereby refusing to reinforce the expectation of the angry voice who is expecting to be ignored so they have excuse to retreat to their own echo chamber, and what if we asked, sincerely and honestly, "I'd like to listen to how you come to that position. Tell me what you think, and why..." Sometimes the question itself compels someone to realize that the conclusions they thought were obvious are not so obvious to everyone, and sometimes it pushes them to re-examine what leads them to their own opinions. Sometimes even, people come to see that the things they always assumed were the "righteous" answer, or the godly position, may not be on the solid footing they thought. And sometimes you as the listener learn something you were not expecting, either.

Answering impotent anger with impotent anger creates no forward motion--it is really just competitive venting. It is scorched-earth warfare at its worst.

Responding to impotent anger with a willingness to listen is not conceding that you are wrong--but rather, it is a chance to defuse someone who is spoiling for a fight about the color of the sky with their red-tinted glasses on, and a refusal to give them permission to run back to their own echo chamber still convinced that they are right.

Today, let us dare to practice the powerful act of listening.

Lord God, let your justice come about, but give us the humility and grace to see that you don't need our blind yelling to make it happen. Give us the courage to be vulnerable enough to listen.