Dealing with anger

"Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.  Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires."  James 1:19-20 NLT

I had an incident this afternoon where someone close to me said something hurtful on social media and I got angry.  If you're like me, your first instinct is to respond in some way.  I wanted to defend against the remarks and point out how wrong this person was to say such a hurtful thing in a public way.  I had even convinced myself that maybe my anger was righteous anger.  And then I read James 1:19-20.  The anger slowly started to recede in the face of what God says about it.  

My New Living Testament Bible has a note next to the word "righteousness" in verse 20.  It says that the word righteousness here can also be translated as justice.  I read the verse again, substituting justice for righteousness, and wow!  It spoke to me in a new and vivid way.  My anger over the situation this afternoon could have led to something completely different than what God had in mind if I had chosen to act on it.  God's sense of justice is just not even close to ours!  He sees the big picture.  He understands why the person who hurt me today said what they said and He knows what to do about it even if I don't, and even when I think I know what ought to be done about it.  His Word says I need to be "slow to get angry."  So instead of being hurt and offended and then angry, I need to be "quick to listen" and try to understand the position of the person who has angered me and then let go of that anger.  God will deal with the person justly, and it isn't up to me to determine how that should be.  

Before I read verse 20 with justice inserted instead of righteousness, I used to think that being angry in itself was a bad thing because it made me unrighteous.  Well who wants to be unrighteous??  Not this girl!  So I was berating myself for being angry and that really isn't the point here.  The point is that the fruits of our anger produce consequences that the Lord does not desire.  When we respond to someone in anger, we choose to take God's justice into our own hands.  I don't know about you, but I sure didn't think about it that way before.  I want to be slow to get angry.  I don't like being angry; who does??  Perhaps if we're all quicker to listen (with the intent to hear the speaker, and without thinking about our reply while they're speaking) then we'll be slower to get angry and less likely to take God's justice into our own less-than-capable hands.  I would so much rather He be responsible for the justice than me anyway, because He's perfect in his decisions and I am so not!