This week, what we are doing (instead of listening to me) is hearing and discussing quotes from Wendell Berry’s 2015 book, Our Only World: Ten Essays.
Today, Wendell Berry expresses a frustration many of us feel. We are comfortable with neither the left nor the right, today’s conservatism or progressivism (especially as practiced by the current political parties). Both sides have contributed to the degradation of individual, family, and local community governance, because both are beholden to corporate interests. The result, Berry laments, is a “politics of mutual estrangement” that just keeps spinning its wheels in the mud, splattering anyone and everyone around.
• • •
In the present political atmosphere it is assumed that everybody must be on one of only two sides, liberal or conservative. It doesn’t matter that neither of these labels signifies much in the way of intellectual responsibility or that both are paralyzed in the face of the overpowering issue of our time: the destruction of land and people, of life itself, by means either economic or military. What does matter is that a person should choose one side or the other, accept the “thinking” and the “positions” of that side and its institutions and be so identified forevermore. How you vote is who you are.
We appear thus to have evolved into a sort of teenage culture of wishful thinking, of contending “positions,” oversimplified and absolute, requiring no knowledge and no thought, no loss, no tragedy, no strenuous effort, no bewilderment, no hard choices.
…To believe, as I do, that families and communities are necessary despite their present decrepitude is to be in the middle and to be most uncomfortable there. My stand nevertheless is practical. I do not think a government should be asked or expected to do what a government cannot do. A government cannot effectively exercise familial authority, nor can it effectively enforce communal or personal standards of moral conduct.
The collapse of families and communities— so far, more or less disguisable as “mobility” or “growth” or “progress” or “liberation”— comes from or with the collapse of personal character and is a social catastrophe. It leaves individuals subject to no requirements or restraints except those imposed by government. The liberal individual desires freedom from restraints upon personal choices and acts, which often has extended to freedom from familial and communal responsibilities. The conservative individual desires freedom from restraints upon economic choices and acts, which often extends to freedom from social, ecological and even economic responsibilities. Preoccupied with these degraded freedoms, both sides have refused to look straight at the dangers and the failures of government-by-corporations.
The Christian or social conservatives who wish for government protection of their version of family values have been seduced by the conservatives of corporate finance who wish for government protection of their semireligion of personal wealth earned in contempt for families. The liberals, calling for too few restraints upon incorporated wealth, wish for government enlargement of their semireligion of personal rights and liberties. One side espouses family values pertaining to temporary homes that are empty all day, every day. The other promotes liberation that vouchsafes little actual freedom and no particular responsibility. And so we are talking about a populace in which nearly everybody is needy, greedy, envious, angry, and alone. We are talking therefore about a politics of mutual estrangement, in which the two sides go at each other with the fervor of extreme righteousness in defense of rickety absolutes that are indefensible and therefore cannot be compromised.
This week, what we are doing (instead of listening to me) is hearing and discussing quotes from Wendell Berry’s 2015 book, Our Only World: Ten Essays. On these weeks of the U.S. political national conventions, I escape to Berry to find fresh air to breathe. Fitting in neither of the binary categories our system seems to want to impose upon us, Berry offers a refreshing and often convicting prophetic voice. In the context of the globalized information barrage we’re subjected to every day, here is a quiet, insistent voice of wisdom rising up from the land and local experience.
In today’s piece, Berry speaks about local communities and what they must do to fight against “the ruling ideas” of our contemporary economy. He states it like this:
The ruling ideas of our present national or international economy are competition, consumption, globalism, corporate profitability, mechanical efficiency, technological change, upward mobility— and in all of them there is the implication of acceptable violence against the land and the people. We, on the contrary, must think again of reverence, humility, affection, familiarity, neighborliness, cooperation, thrift, appropriateness, local loyalty. These terms return us to the best of our heritage. They bring us home.
• • •
The loss of a saving connection between the land and the people begins and continues with the destruction of locally based household economies. This happens, whether in the United States after World War II or in present day China, by policies more or less forcibly moving people off the land. It happens also when the people remaining on the land are convinced by government or academic experts that they “can’t afford” to produce anything for themselves, but must employ all their land and all their effort in making money with which to buy the things they need or can be persuaded to want. Leaders of industry, industrial politics, and industrial education decide, for example, that there are “too many farmers,” and that the surplus would be “better off” working at urban “jobs.” The movement of people off the land and into industry, away from local subsistence and into the economy of jobs and consumption, was one of our national projects after World War II, and it has succeeded.
This division between the land and the people has happened in all the regions of rural Kentucky, just as it has happened or is happening in rural places all over the world. The problem, invisible equally to liberals and conservatives, is that the forces that destroy the possibility of a saving connection between the land and the people destroy at the same time essential values and practices. The conversion of an enormous number of somewhat independent producers into entirely dependent consumers is a radical change that in many ways is immediately catastrophic. Without a saving connection to the land, people become useless to themselves and to one another except by the intervention of money. Everything they need must be bought. Things they cannot buy they do not have.
This week, what we are doing (instead of listening to me) is hearing and discussing quotes from Wendell Berry’s 2015 book, Our Only World: Ten Essays. On these weeks of the U.S. political national conventions, I escape to Berry to find fresh air to breathe. Fitting in neither of the binary categories our system seems to want to impose upon us, Berry offers a refreshing and often convicting prophetic voice. In the context of the globalized information barrage we’re subjected to every day, here is a quiet, insistent voice of wisdom rising up from the land and local experience.
In today’s piece, he writes in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. It could have been written after any of the violent attacks we have witnessed this year.
• • •
The event in Boston is not unique or rare or surprising or in any way new. It is only another transaction in the commerce of violence: the unending, the not foreseeably endable, exchange of an eye for an eye, with customary justifications on every side, in which we fully participate; and beyond that, it is our willingness to destroy anything, any place, or anybody standing between us and whatever we are “manifestly destined” to have.
We congratulate ourselves perpetually upon our Civil War by which the slaves were, in a manner of speaking, “freed.” We forget, if we have ever learned, that the same army that “freed the slaves” established for us the “right” of military violence against a civilian population, and then acted upon that “right” by a war of extermination against the native people of the West. Nobody who knows our history, from the “Indian wars” to our contemporary foreign wars of “homeland defense,” should find anything unusual in the massacre of civilians and their children.
It is not possible for us to reduce the value of life, including human life, to nothing only to suit our own convenience or our own perceived need. By making this reduction for ourselves, we make it for everybody and anybody, even for our enemies, even for the maniacs whose enemies are schoolchildren or spectators at a marathon.
We forget also that violence is so securely founded among us— in war, in forms of land use, in various methods of economic “growth” and “development”— because it is immensely profitable. People do not become wealthy by treating one another or the world kindly and with respect. Do we not need to remember this? Do we have a single eminent leader who would dare to remind us?
I’m going to take a little time off from writing this week. To be honest, I’m tired and more than a little ready for a break.
So, what we’ll do instead of listening to me for the next few days is hear and discuss quotes from Wendell Berry’s 2015 book, Our Only World: Ten Essays. On these weeks of the U.S. political national conventions, I escape to Berry to find fresh air to breathe. Fitting in neither of the binary categories our system seems to want to impose upon us, Berry is a refreshing. And in the context of the information barrage we’re subjected to every day, here is a quiet, insistent voice of wisdom rising up from the land and local experience.
• • •
There is an always significant difference between knowing and believing. We may know that the earth turns, but we believe, as we say, that the sun rises. We know by evidence, or by trust in people who have examined the evidence in a way that we trust is trustworthy. We may sometimes be persuaded to believe by reason, but within the welter of our experience reason is limited and weak. We believe always by coming, in some sense, to see. We believe in what is apparent, in what we can imagine or “picture” in our minds, in what we feel to be true, in what our hearts tell us, in experience, in stories— above all, perhaps, in stories.
We can, to be sure, see parts and so believe in them. But there has always been a higher seeing that informs us that parts, in themselves, are of no worth. Genesis is right: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The phrase “be alone” is a contradiction in terms. A brain alone is a dead brain. A man alone is a dead man.
We are thus as likely to be wrong in what we know as in what we believe.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.
Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.
But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.
It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.
This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.
It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.
Hey, in case you hadn’t heard, some people rambled over to Cleveland this past week for a little party. And next week, a few more folks will ramble to Philadelphia for a different party. Those who drive to these events probably do so in something not unlike our flag-bedecked ’58 beauty above. It’s just that some of them like the red part of the flag best and the others like the blue. As for me, if this election gets any more bizarre, I’ll be putting up the white flag and surrendering. And maybe putting my Rambler (with me in it) on a ferry to Canada.
Oh well, we can hardly avoid politics on a week like this, so we’ll talk about it at least a little today.
Chancellor Hitler and President Hindenburg. The latter had once vowed he would never make Hitler chancellor.
I can’t think of a more provocative article with which to begin Ramblings than this one: Eric Weitz’s piece at Tablet called, “Weimar Germany and Donald Trump.”
Comparisons with Hitler are almost always suspect to me, but Weitz is not exactly doing that. Instead, he describes a process by which the traditional conservatives in Germany during the 1930’s, who at first distanced themselves from the “uncouth, low class, and undisciplined” Nazis, ended up making a political bargain with them shaped by a shared political language. That language shifted the blame for Germany’s defeat in WWI and subsequent humiliations to the Jews, Socialists, Democrats, those who practiced sexual libertinism, and the signers of the Treaty of Versailles.
There was nothing inevitable or predetermined about the Nazi assumption of power. It was the result of a conscious political decision by traditional conservatives made in a time of crisis when Germany wallowed in depression and the political system lay paralyzed.
In the early 1930’s only thirty-some percent of the German population favored the Nazis, a significant number yes, but not enough to give them power. The conservative elite, many of whom represented Germany’s Protestant and Catholic churches, made a bargain with the Nazis and convinced President Paul van Hindenburg to name Hitler chancellor of Germany. He only had three Nazis in his cabinet at the time.
Historical analogies are always fraught. No serious political movement today in the West is anything like the Nazi party. But the process by which traditional and radical conservatives came together through a common language carries numerous warning signals as we experience the surge of right-wing populism from Poland across the continent, on to the United Kingdom, and across the ocean to the United States.
Read the article. As Weitz says, parallels are always hard to draw with accuracy, but many of the similarities are striking. A matter of concern in the U.S. today, as it was in Weimar Germany, is that more moderate politicians are willing to enter an alliance with those spouting extremist rhetoric, especially the language of fear, blame, and hostility toward “the other,” particularly foreign elements said to be harming the nation. “The moderates make the radicals salonfähig, acceptable in polite society. That is the real and pressing danger of the current moment.”
The Brits of course have had their share of upheaval this summer, with the Brexit vote and now a new Prime Minister. It’s nice to know that there is still some continuity there to help our friends across the pond calm down and adjust.
Larry arrived back in 2011, touted by the animal rescue center that recommended him as an A-1 killer of mice. Turned out he did a lot of sleeping on the job instead and didn’t seem to take much interest in the many mice that had invaded 10 Downing St. But he eventually did some hunting and it seemed to satisfy the public for awhile. But mostly he pursued his own cat adventures.
Once, threatened with being replaced by another cat, he fought her and was defeated, though he kept his place in the house. He did, however, once stare down a police dog, greeted many visitors to the home, and is even credited with writing a book and keeping up his own Twitter feed. He has his own bio on uk.gov.
The NPR article reporting all of this puts the fact that the feline in chief is staying in perspective.
It’s been absolute political turmoil in the U.K. over the past few weeks, with the nation deciding to leave the EU, the prime minister stepping down, the replacement being selected months earlier than planned, the lead architects of the Brexit turning down the possibility of prominent posts — and then, in the case of Boris Johnson, being appointed foreign secretary anyway — and the opposition Labour party engaged in open revolt against its leader.
Larry — the indolent, the unmovable, the irrepressibly charming — just might be the most dependable political figure in the U.K. today.
One of the speeches that was certainly “outside the box” (for social conservatives at least) at the Republican Convention was the one given by PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel. In fact, in response to the speech, conservative blogger Matt Walsh tweeted, “”Peter Thiel gets cheered for calling the culture wars fake. Am I watching the DNC or the RNC right now?”
Here’s some of what Thiel said:
“When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?
“Of course, every American has a unique identity. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American. I don’t pretend to agree with every plank in our party’s platform. But fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline.”
Thiel went on to say he thought Donald Trump was the only candidate honest enough to agree with that assessment. Then again, it was the Donald who suggested last year that maybe we should all boycott Starbucks because their holiday cups were plain red and didn’t say “Merry Christmas” or have any other Christmas symbolism on them.
Progressives didn’t like everything Thiel said either. Zack Ford tweeted, for example, “I don’t know for whom the culture wars are fake, but it’s not fake to the LGBT people fighting stigma/discrimination.”
Ironically, Thiel’s “fake culture war” comment came on the same night that the NBA declared that it won’t hold the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte, North Carolina because of the state’s law requiring transgender individuals to use state-owned bathrooms and changing areas consistent with their biological sex.
This week, they were all told to stop drinking the water after it tested positive for THC, the psychoactive chemical in Colorado’s most famous cash crop, marijuana. The NY Times reports:
No one has reported feeling sick or intoxicated from drinking the water, though people around the high-plains town joked on Friday that perhaps they should be drinking more water. On the town’s Facebook community page, Hugo Happenings, people joked about Hugo’s new “healing waters,” and said that its ice cubes could be the tiny town’s answer to marijuana brownies.
Thousands of bottles of water were handed out and the main complaint from Hugo’s citizens was that they closed the town’s swimming pool in the midst of a heat wave, with temperatures in the mid-90’s. The town also sealed off the one municipal well that seemed to be the source of the tainted water.
As we walked through the Ark, we had a very passionate discussion. It was like the debate all over again but more intense at times. Though it did get tense due to our differences in worldviews, it was an amicable visit.
…As we discussed geology and the Ice Age, our discussion turned toward worldviews. Ultimately, this is the heart of the issue—we have two different worldviews and two different interpretations of the same evidence because of our different starting points.
We’re glad Bill Nye took me up on my friendly offer to show him the Ark. During his visit I was able to personally share the gospel with him very clearly. On the first deck, I asked him, before a crowd of people including many young people, if I could pray with him and was able to pray for him there. Our prayer is that what he saw will have an impact on him and that he will be drawn to the gospel of Jesus Christ that is clearly presented at the Ark.
What he found, he told NBC News, was an eye-catching attraction that was “much more troubling or disturbing than I thought it would be.”
“On the third deck (of the ark), every single science exhibit is absolutely wrong,” he said. “Not just misleading, but wrong.”
…Nye said the exhibit encourages visitors to trust faith over science and thereby undercuts their ability to engage in critical thinking.
“It’s all very troubling. You have hundreds of school kids there who have already been indoctrinated and who have been brainwashed,” he said, recalling how one young girl on the Ark told him to change his way of thinking.
“The parents were feeding her word for word,” Nye added.
…Nye said the religious element of the theme park itself doesn’t worry him — rather, he’s concerned about what it’s passing off as fact.
“I’m not busting anyone’s chops about a religion,” he said. “This is about the absolutely wrong idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old that’s alarming to me.”
Donald Trump entered on night one to Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” This classic rock song, of course, features flamboyant gay idol Freddie Mercury.
Monday afternoon, it was David Bowie, played by the RNC house band singing about love, religion, and cocaine — “Station to Station.”
Perfect choices for the party of Family Values™.
Campbell talks about some other songs, but let’s cut to the chase: my favorite was the Rolling Stones’ classic, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
Apparently the message was that Donald Trump is what we all really need. But I found it a striking admission: Who really, deep down in their hearts, wants this guy?
Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump, the eat your peas and shut up candidate.
Come back next week, when we’ll discuss cheesesteaks and corruption after the blue folks meet in Philly.
Grief is our human response to loss. We normally use the word to speak of someone who’s lost a loved one through death, but grief is bigger than that. Much more fundamental to the experience of daily life than that.
In fact, we might think of life itself as a series of losses that we grieve. Every new step and season in life means not only gaining something new but also losing something we had before. It starts with birth itself, when a baby is summarily expelled from its mother’s womb. This is life anew, but it’s also the loss of the womb, its warmth, comfort, and nourishment. And so it is as we grow up, moving into new stages of development, leaving the former ones behind — bringing everything we’ve gained with us, of course, but also losing something in the process.
In my childhood, through adolescence, and continuing through most of my adult life, I relocated often. Our family moved several times as my father made his way up the corporate ladder of his business, and each time there were exciting new things to which we looked forward: a new place to live and explore, new friends, new school, church, and activities. But a quick glance in the rear view mirror reminded me that this change required leaving our old house and my old friends behind.
I’m pretty sure, though I haven’t thoroughly analyzed it, that this has been one of the most formative patterns in my life. In a way peculiar to my experience, I’ve emerged as someone “acquainted with grief.”
But aren’t we all?
Our stories may be different, but each one of us has suffered loss after loss after loss through the course of life. Some of those losses have been part of the natural course of being human. Some losses have been spectacular and remarkable, surprising, and devastating. But whatever losses we’ve known, we have also learned and practiced our own ways of mourning and grieving.
I’m reading a poignant story of a man who had an accident in the mill where he worked, which left his hand severely injured. This loss was especially hurtful to him because he loved baseball, and found his great joy in being a pitcher in semi-pro ball.
The following passage is a letter from the manager to the boy’s eleven year old son about his father’s accident.
Getting down to this damned thumb business, I’m proud you’d think of me at a time like this, and sorry your daddy’s hurting. You, me & your papa are 3 of the tiny percentage of souls on this miserable earth who’ve figured out that playing ball is the highest purpose God ever invented the human male body for. The rub is, once you’ve known & done it what you go through when you lose it is a death, pure & simple.
I’ve seen it 1000 times & died the death myself, & about all them 1001 deaths have taught me is Dammit! Dying hurts! If I was there to crack a beer with your daddy (or 6 or 12, let’s be honest here) I’d probably wait till he was all lubed up then say, “Listen. Let it hurt when it hurts, damn it Hubert!” You know what I mean. The Papa Chance I remember tended to get a tad heroic at times. Not that I don’t admire a hero. But watching some poor bounder limp around with a smile nailed to his face while his insides bleed from one end clear out the other is a thing I can’t much stand. To that mother of yours I might add something like Dangit, Laura, I know you’re baptized in the name of the This and the That, but when you got the kind of man who holds everything in you got to let it bust out once in awhile. Then of course I’d run like hell. Don’t get me wrong here. I hold nothing but the highest kind of respect against your mother. I just happen to be a man who believes if God wanted us to always keep our upper lip stiff as a dang billy goat’s weener He’d of made us all a bunch of Englishmen for godsake.
“I’ve seen it 1000 times & died the death myself, & about all them 1001 deaths have taught me is Dammit! Dying hurts! …Listen. Let it hurt when it hurts, damn it!”
Note from CM: I’m officiating a wedding this week, one of several I’ve been asked to conduct this year. Thinking about the privilege of participating in these joyous occasions brought this post to mind.
• • •
I used to not like weddings very much. They seemed like a lot of trouble, and people tended to overdo them. When we had children at home and lots of things on our plate, it seems that weddings always interrupted other plans and caused upheaval in our routine. Plus, they usually took place on Saturdays, and, as a pastor, Sundays were packed, so I was preoccupied and unable to just take part and enjoy. Sure, we were happy for the couple and their family, but we were also glad when the whole affair was over.
Now I love weddings. First of all, since I work for hospice and am on hand for so many sad occasions, it is a nice change of pace to participate in an event that is all about life and love and joy. Second, I don’t have as many Sunday responsibilities these days, so my mind is freer and more able to focus on the fun and celebration. Third, many of the couples whose weddings we attend are in some way connected to our children, so we are able to rejoice with our friends in the coming of age of a new generation of families.
Being outside of our former pietistic evangelical circles also enables me to enjoy the wine more freely. And the dancing. And many other celebratory aspects not always included in the wedding parties of the moralists.
I remember watching “Fiddler on the Roof” when I was a young man and being befuddled by the total abandonment to celebration pictured in the wedding scenes. What a killjoy I was! I wouldn’t have known a good time if it had bitten me on the tukhus.
And along comes Jesus in John 2:1-11, providing wine at a wedding — the very best wine, in large quantities, after all the other wine has already been consumed — as a sign of who he is and what he has come to do. Taking the stone water pots that were sanctified for the somber religious purposes of purification, he had filled them to the brim and then transformed their contents into the finest of alcoholic beverages — for the pure enjoyment of the people who were gathered there.
The result? A sign — a sign of the Kingdom. Glory — the glory of God. And where was God’s blessing seen and experienced? In glasses raised and toasts proclaimed! In whirling dances! In laughter and light-hearted banter! In joy and celebration!
Don’t imagine God is pleased with your sacrifices. Don’t believe he delights in your strenuous efforts at holiness, your morbid introspection, your sober demeanor and serious attitude. Don’t think for a minute that he wants you to rein in your passions and turn your back on pleasure. No! No! A thousand times no! Not for nothing does the psalmist say to God, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” (Ps. 16:11)
As C.S. Lewis reminded us:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Note from CM: Updated post to use Kingdom NT translation. Thanks, Charles!
Wednesdays with James Lesson Eight: Taking Responsibility, Receiving from God
Today we will bite off a bit bigger chunk of the Epistle of James, looking at James 1:12-27.
12 God’s blessing on the man who endures testing! When he has passed the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Nobody being tested should say, “It’s God that’s testing me,” for God cannot be tested by evil, and he himself tests nobody. 14 Rather, each person is tested when they are dragged off and enticed by their own desires. 15 Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death.
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear family. 17 Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes down from above, from the father of lights. His steady light doesn’t vary. It doesn’t change and produce shadows. 18 He became our father by the word of truth; that was his firm decision, and the result is that we are a kind of first fruits of his creatures. The Word That Goes to Work
19 So, my dear brothers and sisters, get this straight. Every person should be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. 20 Human anger, you see, doesn’t produce God’s justice! 21 So put away everything that is sordid, all that overflowing malice, and humbly receive the word which has been planted within you and which has the power to rescue your lives.
22 But be people who do the word, not merely people who hear it and deceive themselves. 23 Someone who hears the word but doesn’t do it, you see, is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. 24 He notices himself, but then he goes away and quickly forgets what he looked like. 25 But the person who looks into the perfect law of freedom, and goes on with it, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer who does the deed—such a person is blessed in their doing.
26 If anyone supposes that they are devout, and does not control their tongue, but rather deceives their heart—such a person’s devotion is futile. 27 As far as God the father is concerned, pure, unsullied devotion works like this: you should visit orphans and widows in their sorrow, and prevent the world leaving its dirty smudge on you.
As we saw in an earlier study, the epistle begins with a double-opening. The author introduces his three main themes and then repeats them in a more expansive fashion. Today’s three paragraphs touch once more on the concepts of testing, wisdom, and poverty.
Let me try to summarize the argument of this passage:
God’s plan for those under the test is ultimate blessedness (1:12-18):
James is trying to encourage communities of Jewish Christians who are suffering troubles and difficulties in their lives. He blesses them as Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount, and promises them that God will reward those who love him with life, even though they pass through severe tests.
Times of testing produce conditions in which they may find themselves tempted in various ways. James encourages them to take personal responsibility for those occasions when they succumb to temptation under stress (cf. 4:1-4). That is not God’s desire for them. It is their own desire leading them to sin, which in turn leads to death. God, on the other hand, has brought them forth to know life in a new creation. He is the generous giver of good gifts, not one who leads his children astray.
When under the test, we must be wise and avoid anger (1:19-21):
In context, James’s counsel here pinpoints some of the temptations that a community under stress faces — failing to listen to others, uttering rash and unwise speech, and letting quick tempers explode. He urges them to avoid this path and gives them a strong warning: this will not produce results that are in keeping with God’s righteous standards.
Instead, they are to recognize and clean up their inner attitudes, and humbly seek truth from God. When in doubt, shut up, confess your sins, and seek God’s saving grace.
When under the test, we must continue to care for the most vulnerable (1:22-27):
It is not enough to avoid temptation. James reminds these communities that there are needy, vulnerable people among them who need loving care. What good is it to keep myself pure if my brother or sister is suffering and I do nothing about it? So, James says, don’t stop at receiving the word which means your own salvation. Instead, practice the love that God’s word everywhere commends. Guard yourselves, yes, but even more, love your neighbors.
✠
This is a cogent and challenging text. Like most wisdom teaching, it urges believers to take responsibility for actually practicing their faith and not just talking about it.
That’s challenge enough, but when you consider that James is writing to communities who find themselves under severe trials, the task becomes even more daunting. When under that kind of stress, folks, no matter how strong their faith, can easily become selfish, withdrawn, impatient, angry, snippy with others, and forgetful of those in their midst who have it much worse.
James pulls no punches. This is straightforward and direct exhortation. Take responsibility. Practice your faith. It is also shot through with reminders that God is for us, that his desire for us is life and new creation, that his word and presence and power are with us and in us and can save us and enable us to keep going, keep trusting, and keep loving.
I wrote a post on preaching a couple of years ago. I ended that piece with a list of characteristics of the kind of sermons I hope I will be known for preaching. I’ve edited it a bit, and in the light of yesterday’s post, I thought I would run it again today for further discussion.
Here is the kind of preaching I hope to do:
Rich in nourishing content, with a usual focus on making one main point
Pastoral (gracious, sensitive, compassionate — good preaching is loving your congregation through words)
Concise (I’d say twenty minutes max)
Literate about life, human nature, and the ways of the world
Imaginative and poetic (creates a metaphorical world and draws us in)
Faithful to the Story of the faith and the particular text being preached
Brings the congregation into the presence of Jesus so that we might encounter him again and have our faith renewed
Prepares the congregation to be sent into daily life “between Sundays” as followers of Jesus who lay down their lives for others
In my opinion, this kind of preaching functions best within the context of the traditional liturgy structure:
Gathering together before God
Hearing the Word
Coming to the Table
Being Sent into the World
Please don’t misunderstand me — when I say “liturgy,” I am not suggesting it must be a particular style of service (such as traditional or contemporary). I have argued before that the form and order of the liturgy is the important thing. The Christian worship service is and has traditionally been understood as a meal gathering.
The purpose of the Word in such a gathering is to reinforce the gospel of Jesus that has brought us together, which gives us life, and which we will celebrate and be nourished by once again at the Table. We are then sent out into the world to live in this good news daily with Jesus among our neighbors.
In other words, the reading and proclamation of the Word is a community-forming act. Like the tradition of families having regular Sunday dinners and spending time in conversation and storytelling, in the the Christian meal gathering such preaching helps bind us together, satisfy (and increase!) our hunger, deepen our organic ties with one another, and equip us to bear the family name in daily life. “The goal of our instruction is love…” (1Tim. 1:5).
The kind of preaching we hear (and the kind of service we participate in) determines the kind of community that will be formed.
That’s why I believe so strongly in the kind of preaching I commend here.
Getting down to this damned thumb business, I’m proud you’d think of me at a time like this, and sorry your daddy’s hurting. You, me & your papa are 3 of the tiny percentage of souls on this miserable earth who’ve figured out that playing ball is the highest purpose God ever invented the human male body for. The rub is, once you’ve known & done it what you go through when you lose it is a death, pure & simple.
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