NT Journey--James 1

Persevering to Do Good     

As you can see, I'm desperately trying to catch up with my blogging today.  Many of you know that my life has become crazy between moving and helping out with camp--it's been difficult to keep up.  So today, I'm blasting you with many posts and hopefully I'll catch all the way up.  I'm sure this isn't the first time it'll happen, so be patient with me!  Now back to the journey....

James 1 is divided into two distinct sections, both of which are pure teaching "gold."  In the New Testament journey, I have often just chosen one small section to focus on, but both sections in James 1 are so valuable, they both deserve mention.

Pain: An Opportunity to Grow     
In our society, we don't like pain.  Well, actually no one likes pain in any society, but our society makes it a centerpiece to avoid it at all costs and we do it pretty well.  One thing that helps us avoid pain is options and we have millions of them.  We can buy pain relieving pills, caplets, "liquigels", and patches.  We can see a doctor or chiropractor at an time to relieve back or neck pain.  If someone at work is being a pain, we can transfer to another department or just find another job.  Really, only our society has so much ability to run from pain.

But the problem is that the Bible teaches us that pain is not just something to run from, it's something pay attention to.  When we feel pain in our bodies, it's a sign that something is wrong.  If all I do is ignore the pain or numb the pain, what's causing the pain will only get worse.  For instance, if I ignore chest pain or if I drug myself so heavily I can't feel it, chances are I will experience a heart-attack.  If every time I get into a painful spot in a relationship, I run or anesthetize it through drugs or alcohol, the relationship will not get better, it will get worse.

This is essential what James is saying in the first half of chapter one.  He even says that we should be joyful that we experience pain and trials, because we are being presented an opportunity to grow.  Now the trials of the people James was writing to was most likely persecution by the religious and civic leaders.  They had be displaced from their homes and in many way ostracized from society because of their faith.  But James doesn't instruct them to fight the powers or defend their rights.  Instead he instructs them to look at the persecution as a time to grow their faith.

In verse 4, he then instructs them to ask (pray) for wisdom.  Wisdom is more than knowledge.  Wisdom is the ability to see things from God's perspective.  When we see things from God's perspective, we look at pain and trials differently than if we only see them from our own (modern Western) perspective that views pain as something to be avoided at all costs.  James says that when we move toward pain and embrace our trials, we receive the "crown of life that God promises to all who love Him."  The "crown of life" is not just talking about heaven, but it's talking about becoming who God created you to be.  We experience full life when we are fully ourselves.  Of course, the completion of that will happen in heaven, but we can experience more and more of it in this life.  And pain isn't an obstacle to that life, but it's the path to it.

Listening and Doing     
James must have listened very carefully to Jesus and His teachings, because verses 19 thought 26 sound like them come straight from Jesus' mouth.  If you look closely at the teachings of Jesus (and we have when we've studied the Gospels), you'll see that Jesus makes a strong connection between faith and action.  If you don't have action you don't really have faith.  Remember, for instance, Matthew 7 where Jesus tells the story of the wise and the foolish builders.

We often present the story as  if Jesus is saying that the wise builder builds his house on the foundation of Jesus, but the foolish builder builds on something else.  But that's not really what Jesus says.  Instead, Jesus says that the wise builder is the one who hears Jesus' words and does what He says.  The foolish builder is the one who hears His words but does not do what He says.  So the difference between wise and foolish is in the practice.

This is exactly what James says in this section.  The key to a deep spiritual life--the key to growth--is in practicing what Jesus preaches.  People who only have a knowledge of Scripture, but can't be bothered to live it out are not really building on the foundation of Jesus.  People who constantly clamor for deeper preaching or teaching most likely aren't practicing what they hear.  What they usually mean is that they want to pick apart scriptures and learn more knowledge in their head, but the reality is this doesn't make them deeper Christians.  In fact, if we learned anything from Paul's letters to the Corinthians, we learned that head knowledge sometimes makes us less mature if we never allow it to grow into love for God and people.  But if we only seek more knowledge without practice, we will inevitably become proud of what we know and look down on others who don't know as much.  But when we put into practice what we learn, we learn to love, which is the center of God's desire for us.

At the end of chapter one, James seems to give us practical instructions for what it means to have true faith.  James is warring against the idea that going to church and doing all the religious stuff is what God wants.  Instead, he tells us that religion that is "pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  Here, he ties the second section in to the first.  When we have pure "religion" we are more concerned about alleviating the pain of others that we are about alleviating our own pain.  We should fight for justice and the rights of others, but allow God to fight for our own.  The more we grow, the less we are concerned about our own pain and the more we turn our attention on the suffering of others. 

That's what Jesus did.  He was willing to suffer and die to we could live.  He did that as an example for us to follow.  When we are willing to suffer and give up our own life, that's when we will find God's life.