James 1:19-27
"listening and doing"
"everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger." If we listen first, we speak second, yes? if we speak after we hear, there's less chance of saying something completely and utterly stupid or misplaced, which results in anger... (this i do know, and it's not fun...) anger is something we, as Christians should be avoiding as anger does not create righteousness. Instead, it brings us down and causes us to do, say or think that we would normally not do. We are called, here and in Hebrews 12:1, to rid ourselves of immorality and evil and accept the word of God, the gospel, which was given to us that we might be saved...
James then carries on, "do not merely listen to the word... do what it says." Paul phrases this slightly differently, but the idea is the same. It is one thing to have faith, to know the word of God, but the fulfillment of that, the realization of that is in the doing. those who merely listen to the word and leave it at that are compared to fools who look at themselves in the mirror, walk away and forget what they look like... now, you kinda have to be a special kind of stupid to forget what you look like, so what does that say about those who hear and know God's word but do not act on it? now, I know this is a slightly uncomfortable passage and concept for some people, but we have been called to action many times in the Bible - even by Christ himself (Matt 28:18-19, Acts 1:8). so, really, if we know the word, then we also know that we're supposed to be doing stuff, too...
Oh, and there's more... those who do receive and know the word of God and who dwell and act upon it, James says that they will be blessed...
Finally, James teaches that any "religious" man that does not rein in his tongue deceives himself and renders his religion worthless... yeah, umm... that's very true, especially in hindsight... If we go about with a loose tongue, gossiping about and bad-mouthing others or insulting others we end up showing any observers that we take our religion very [un]seriously... this ends up hurting our witness because it removes a very noticeable difference between us and the rest of the world (well, noticeable in its absence). people look and say, "these Christians speak and act better than us, but really they're the same... why bother with them?"
We are supposed to be the models of character, to "look after the orphans and widows," but are we? are we really standing up for the weak and downtrodden? the invisible? the hurt? are we really putting aside the pollution of the world or are we still holding on to some of it? It's not easy, and I know I still need to work on this, but imagine a world in which Christians acted like they are supposed to. like they are commanded to. wouldn't that be amazing?
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