Worship Service, September 1st, 2024
We reflected on James’ timeless invitation to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not lead to God’s righteousness”, particularly in the modern context where it seems like conflict is rewarded and anger is encouraged.
Samuel summarized Jan Van Bevel’s work on the 4 Dark Laws of Online Engagement, citations are from
https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-four-dark-laws-of-online-engagement
Sermon, September 1, Text:
Good morning friends!
It’s good to gather in worship with all of you this morning
I hope this day finds you well.
I’m here alone today because Rachel and the kids are helping her parents with a moving sale, before their transition to Newton in October.
I spent yesterday writing this sermon on the bus back to from Wichita. I wasn’t planning on going along this weekend, but my uncle Don’s visitation/life celebration with pie was in Newton on Friday night, and I decided I wanted to go to support my cousins and my mom.
It was good to go, and my heart is full of big emotions after the journey. Grief and memory color our lives in profound ways.
But this is not a sermon about loss. This is a sermon about tongues, and some good advice from the Epistle from James.
James summary
The Epistle from James is one of the last books written in the Bible. When James was writing, the church was well established, and the community was beginning to think about how to go forward together into the future.
And so James spends his time encouraging Christians not just to have faith in Jesus, but to do the good work of the church, for ‘faith without works is dead’ which is probably the most famous of his many quotable quotes (today we have several bangers).
James was particularly concerned with right treatment of fellow Christians, both in times of conflict- the text we have here- and in relationships between rich and poor (later he goes on a rant about rich people getting treated better than poor people when they visit a church).
Our passage this morning fits into that larger theme of faith with works. It doesn’t just matter what we believe, it matters what we do.
The core text this morning is:
“You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,
for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”
This caution encouraging us to gentle relationships has for many centuries been good advice. But I suspect that I am not alone in noticing that
The world today
in the world today, it feels like this invitation to control our tongues is a bit out of style. We live in a world where quick responses are required- we’re bombarded with texts and emails asking for immediate action, our anger kindled every time we open our phones to see what’s going, where
a wild tongue, a lack of filter, a willingness to loudly proclaim radical and ridiculous things and wade into any conflict sometimes seems like the easiest way to get attention, status, and fame.
Plain English
I was listening to the podcast Plain English by Derrick Tompson of The Atlantic a few weeks ago. His guest was Jay Van Bevel, Psychology Professor at New York University, author of The Power of Us.
https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-four-dark-laws-of-online-engagement
Van Bevel is studying the negative effects of our online lives on human culture. And he summarizes his findings
In what he calls
The Four Dark Laws of Online Engagement, or “The Devil’s Playbook” They are this-
- Negativity drives engagement.
- Extremism Commands Attention
- Outgroup Animosity Captures Clicks
- Moral Emotional Language Magnifies Messages
I suspect you understand each of these intuitively already, but a quick summary-
Negativity drives engagement-
People are interested in bad news. If it bleeds, it leads. (statistic here) We’ve known it for a thousand years, but we’ve supercharged it in our current age, so we exagerate the ills of the world and underestimate the joys. Human beings are richer, happier, safer, and kinder now than at any point in history, and we all still all think everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
Dark Law 2: Extremism Commands Attention-
It is a statistical fact that most people are moderate. The American Political survey suggests (insert here). But Moderate people don’t generally spend their time fighting online. So on Twitter, for example, 97% of posts come from the 10% of people on the far left and right of the political spectrum, and the middle 90% take up on 3% of the airspace (this blew my mind, I hope you found it surprising as well). I kind of get how it happens- if you’re on the extremes, you’re going to be angriest about the status quo, and need to do the most work to persuade people to the cause, but it means all of us hear primarily from people who are more extreme than we are, which 1) pulls us away from the middle, listening to more radical people on our side, and 2) assume the worst of the opposition, since they are publicly represented by the most radical of their voices. It’s a fact I have to remember every time the neighborhood advocate for Texas to succeed from the union posts pop up on my Facebook feed.
Law 3: Outgroup Animosity Captures Clicks-
We love to read about the crimes of our enemies. A social media post blasting your oponent- maybe Ted Cruz going to Mexico during a winter storm, Joe Biden’s latest misstatement, A scathing attack on Israel’s aparthied state or news of Palestine’s latest suicide bombing will get about twice the shares that one celebrating something good that someone on your side did.
And Finally, Law 4: Moral Emotional Language Magnifies Messages
If you add moral language- good bad, evil, wrong, to your social media stream you significantly increase the chance it will been seen and spread. The Algorithm loves passion. At the same time, moral/ethical language tends to be off-putting to those who disagree with us.
What happens?
All this works together to drive us apart and discourage us about where we’re going.
Bad news about our radical evil opponents races races around the world as they share the same bad news about us, and the language that is rewarded drives us towards teams and silos, dividing and depressing us.
If you participate in digital spaces you’re motivated, encouraged, tempted, even, to function as an escalator, someone who activates anger and fear and judgment on your neighbors. I certainly feel it, and I suspect many of you do as well.
It’s… I don’t want to fall into my own trap of villification and exageration and concern with bad news, but I think it’s a messy problem we should together consider how best to work on.
So what?
I suspect it’s obvious why I thought this was worth bringing up this morning. Because the 4 dark truths of Engagement have everything to do with our scripture this morning.
The demands of social media are pretty much the exact opposite of our encouragement from the book of James.
You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,
for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.
Listening carefully and clearly, trying to care more about where someone is coming from than what you can convince them of, speaking with reflection and care, aiming to calm emotions rather than escalate, and letting anger be a last resort, instead of the first tool in the tool box, these are the skills that lead to healthier relations, in families, in the church, at work, in the neighborhood. I suspect they’d do the same online, but it’s hard to tell, because they get burried by the algorithm.
So what do we do?
Online remember that
- Any online conversation is likely to be with an unrepresentative sample of the population. In a space that rewards anger, stridentness, and moral absolutes, don’t judge any large groups of people by their self-proclaimed representatives.
- It’s okay to disengage. There may not be any virtue to be gained by following ‘the news’ online. I know a number of people who found themselves getting sucked into online rage holes, and simply decided to quit, to back out, to let others fight that fight, take that attention. And I don’t think any of them have regretted it.
- moderators should moderate. If you want a representative dialogue you have to encourage the middle voices, not just let loose the preachers who love to hear themselves talk.
- Try not to let the skills and tools of the online world infiltrate the real world. Practice talking to family or neighbors who disagree in love and grace.
In person, of course,
We all have opportunities to care for our tongues.
I don’t know the last time you snapped in a way you regret, said something mean or unkind. I suspect my most recent example would include my children, but I’m not going to try to come up with one particular story for your amusement.
Instead, I’ll invite you to think about your example,
What would you have sounded like, what would you have said, if you’d done better? What would a gentler or more winsome response have looked like? Can you imagine responding less anxiously next time?
Do not forget that human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.
So we could stop there. But that’s not where James ends. No, instead of closing his reflections on tongues and moving on to another topic, in the midst of this encouragement to self-control,
James makes this interesting leap from speech to action. For James, there’s this interpersonal task, speaking slowly, listening quickly, remaining less anxious. But there’s another interpersonal task that is also important.
He begins his turn in verse 22. He’s just said ‘be quick to listen.” but then, immediately he says “But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” listening isn’t enough. No, he goes on in verse 27
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” He knows it’s possible to
From being to doing, James suggests it’s not enough to just control our words. Our love of neighbor also includes acts of generosity and care for those on the margins of society. I rode a Greyhound bus yesterday across Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and that’s a different cross section of society than I most frequently rub shoulders with in my solidly upper-middle class neighborhood. There were a lot of smoke breaks, some aggressive flirting that I thought bordered on harassment, conflicts over seats that I have never seen on airplanes. But I also met Scott, an elderly gentleman who saw my Peace Mennonite t-shirt and excitedly told about his great-grandmother who was a Mennonite from Ukraine, and how he had the old organ from an old Mennonite Church near Enid as one of his prized possessions. He said if he ever makes it down to Dallas he’ll come on by and say hi.
James knew how easy it was to honor the people who could perform religion well. After all, that was one of Jesus’ key concerns- Pharisees who knew all the answers, who had time and energy for self control, for obedience, but who let too many slip through the cracks, or sent away those who were on the margins.
Our careful words are there to manage conflicts between Christians. But our task remains to go beyond the church. To care for those on the margins, to work for the flourishing of all people, care about justice and peace in all their ways.
May we go in love and faith, now and always.
peacemennonitedallas.org 