Seasoned with Salt
Day 229 – 17 August
Seven Seconds Behind Live
“This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.” (James 1:19, NASB)
The Dump Button
Live radio has a secret, and the secret is that it is rarely quite live. Since the middle of the last century, broadcasters running phone-ins and live events have transmitted their programmes a few seconds behind the studio clock, commonly around seven, so that between a word being spoken and a word reaching the nation there stands a small corridor of time, and in that corridor sits an operator with a finger on what the trade calls the dump button. Let a caller turn abusive or a guest let fly, and the offending seconds are dumped before they ever touch the air; the audience hears a hiccup, and a reputation is saved. Consider what the arrangement admits: an entire industry, staffed by professional talkers, concluded long ago that the human mouth is too dangerous to be broadcast in real time, and engineered a delay between word and world. James asked every believer to install the same equipment, and he wrote the specification in nine Greek words.
One Accelerator, Two Brakes
The sentence is a standing order for the whole race: ἔστω (estō, let be) πᾶς ἄνθρωπος (pas anthrōpos, every person), no exemptions for the eloquent or the senior. Then come the settings, and their asymmetry is the sermon. Be ταχύς (tachys, quick, swift) towards hearing, and this adjective makes its one and only New Testament appearance right here, the language’s whole stock of inspired quickness spent entirely on the ears. Then βραδύς (bradys, slow) towards speaking, and bradys (slow) again towards ὀργή (orgē, anger): one accelerator, two brakes, the ears floored and the mouth and temper held. The old Stoic Zeno is credited with quipping that nature gave us two ears and one mouth that we might listen twice as much as we speak, but James went further than arithmetic, for his ratio sits inside a doctrine. The verse before it says the Father brought us forth by the word of truth, and the verse after it commands us to receive the implanted word which is able to save; hearing, in this letter, is the organ of salvation, which is why faith comes by hearing, and why the ears alone get the accelerator. And verse twenty supplies the reason for the second brake: the orgē (anger) of man works no righteousness of God. Fast tempers manufacture many things, and heaven’s righteousness has never once been among them.
The Other Address of Slow
Now follow bradys (slow) to its only other New Testament address, because the journey turns the word over in the light. On the road to Emmaus, the risen Lord fell in step with two despondent disciples and said, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Same word, opposite verdict. In James, slowness is prescribed; at Emmaus, it is rebuked; and the difference is entirely a matter of address. Slowness is a tool, moral only in its placement, a brake that blesses on the mouth and curses on the heart. Set the two texts side by side and they X-ray our factory settings, because most of us run every dial backwards: quick to speak and slow to hear, quick to anger and slow to believe. The whole week ahead stands under the figure of the guarded gate, and its first lesson is this relocation, moving the quickness to the ears and the faith, and the slowness to the tongue and the temper, until the machine runs the way its Designer specified.
The Long-Nosed God
For the settings are His own before they are ours, and the Hebrew that says so is one of Scripture’s most delightful figures. When the LORD proclaimed His name to Moses, He declared Himself אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם (erek appayim, long of nostrils), which every English Bible rightly renders slow to anger, because Thursday’s little word אַף (af, nose) has returned, the nose that Hebrew makes the seat of anger, and in God that nose is long: the heat has the whole length of His patience to travel before anything like wrath appears. Israel sang it, the LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger; Jonah sulked about it, complaining that he had fled precisely because he knew God was erek appayim (slow to anger) and would relent over Nineveh; and Nahum balanced it forever, the LORD is slow to anger and great in power, patience with omnipotence behind it, never weakness wearing a smile. Read the figure with the care it asks: He has no nostrils, and no temper slowly filling, for the anger-language of Scripture is itself accommodation, clothing His settled, changeless, holy opposition to evil in the vocabulary of our faces; the long nose teaches that mercy leads His dealings, never that rage is being managed. And the other dial matches, for the God who is slowest to anger is quickest to hear: His ears are attentive to the cry of the righteous, and He has promised that before they call, I will answer. Quickest to hear, slowest to anger: James 1:19 turns out to be the family firmware, and the command is simply to run the settings of the house. One thing alone makes them runnable, and the commentators put a finger on it: doubt speeds up the mouth, while trust affords the time. The person convinced that God is in control can let the other person finish the sentence.
Installing the Delay
So install the equipment today, in three fittings. First, adopt the broadcaster’s corridor: under provocation, put seven silent seconds between the words you hear and the words you send, and you will be astonished how many replies get dumped in the delay and how few of them are ever missed. Second, respect thinking distance: the Highway Code teaches every British driver that stopping at thirty miles per hour takes twenty-three metres, and nine of them, the first nine, are thinking distance, covered before the brakes even engage; conversations obey the same physics, so the faster the exchange is moving, the more distance the mouth must be given before it acts. Third, run the ratio audit: two hearings for every speaking, the whole story before the first opinion, the question asked before the verdict offered. The gate is guarded first by a clock, and tomorrow the week walks deeper in.
Declaration
My ears take the accelerator today, and my mouth rides the brake. I will hear a matter to its end before my answer leaves the yard, and where provocation arrives, my temper will be the slowest thing in the room. I run these settings because they are the family settings: the One I belong to is quickest to hear and slowest to anger, and children pick up the rhythms of the house. So I install the delay at my lips this morning, and every reply of mine travels a few seconds behind live.
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