“Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” James 1:19. It’s advice that greatly changed my life nearly a decade and a half ago. While I had grown up in an evangelical Christian household, as a teen I rebelled.
I first turned to other religions, but eventually I would give up my faith completely. It would be to atheism that I would turn, and in particular, to the New Atheist movement. For me, the words of James had no bearing; I was angry, and if you didn’t believe as I did, I wasn’t going to listen.
For a few years, I would remain in this mindset, I would remain part of the New Atheist movement. God didn’t exist, religion was abusive, and I was going to make sure others knew that. Going down this road, I would end up becoming convinced that Jesus never existed at all; I had bought the Jesus-myth idea hook, line, and sinker.
It was at my angriest, when my detest for religion was at its height, that the words of James would make a difference. It wasn’t me who chose to listen though, it was another. Another who listened through my anger. Who let me vent. And once I was finished, challenged me, not by insulting my views and labeling me a fool, but through making me question my own logic, my own rationalization. It was through this that I ended up finding my own path to faith.
This individual had absolutely no reason to take the time to bother with me; someone who believed he was an idiot and intellectually dishonest. But nonetheless, he had. He treated me with respect, and not someone who was less, someone who deserved to simply be dismissed.
It was through his ability to be quick to listen, and slow to speak, that over time, a real conversation could be had. The respect he had for me would become mutual, and the challenges he posed would finally truly be heard. Eventually, those challenges would put me on my own path to faith.
However, it would take many years for me to really focus on the words of James, and to put them into practice. It’s a task that isn’t always easy. But it is one that is necessary to allow for true conversations to be had, for true communication to function.
We can not think of those who disagree with us, who have differing views, as fools. To do such prevents any meaningful talk. In the end, it just creates anger, which causes people to dig in their heels. No listening is done, only speaking.