The Proud
In which we venture into the negative side of James 3:13-4:10, covering the other guys known as The Proud. For the positive side, The Wise, please see Day 11.0.
14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
James 3:14-16; 4:1-4
You may recall from Day 11.0 I contended that James 3:13-18 and James 4:1-10 (at least) are inextricably linked despite the interruption of the chapter designation. In 3:13 James asks us, Who is wise and understanding among you? I don’t think he meant this sarcastically. He is recommending how those, even if it be few, who are wise should live. Show your works in the meekness of wisdom. How? By [your] good conduct.
Just do it
I think James is goading us to recognize the difference between claiming wisdom and proving wisdom. The Proud claim they are wise. Proving what we proclaim is a major theme in James. We have covered this in detail previously, but briefly: Be doers, not hearers only (James 1:22). Our religion is false if we can’t control our speech, or if we do not care for the needy (James 1:26-27) Faith, apart from works to prove it, is dead (James 2:17; 2:26). Wisdom from God is pious, forgiving, and bears real fruit (James 3:17-18).
False wisdom
In James 3:14-16 (see above) James says if we claim to be wise, but live a life of selfishness, covetousness, pursuing pleasure, it is false wisdom. False wisdom, and boasting in it ends in disorder and wicked deeds. James says it is not real wisdom. Instead, it is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. Demonic? Sounds pretty dire. Paul says something similar in Romans 1, with a most dire, even prophetic, warning for the cadre of the Proud.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Romans 1:21-32
The root cause
James states that if we find ourselves in a quarrelsome, bitter, and angst ridden situation, where no fruit is being produced, the root cause is selfishness, covetousness, and devotion to our passions. In other words, we might be numbered among the Proud. It is important here to note that passions does not simply refer to actions based on elevated emotion. The word can be translated pleasures. Paul, described these pleasures – even the desiring of them – as a curse from God for disobedience and atheism. He addresses the pleasures again in Philippians 3.
17 Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. 18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Philippians 3:17-19
For years I was convicted – really stricken in my heart – when reading, or even thinking about, Philippians 3:19. I have rarely gloried in my shame. But, I also have spent many different phases in my life focused on earthly things. I look back and can see myself counted, not amongst the Wise, but the Proud.
I have also been an acolyte at the temple of the belly. For much of my life you could have called me a pseudo-Epicurean. Not necessarily a glutton, but definitely devoted to my desires. Oh, the restaurant is good, you say? But, do they brew their own beer? The food is decent, you say? But, don’t we want the best? You are starving now, you say? I’m not stopping for anything under 4.8 stars. C.S. Lewis summed me up pretty much perfectly.
The other side of gluttony
Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about good, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really “properly” cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence – it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes – “puts him out”, for then charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The Proud respond, aghast
Males? Trigger warning! I prefer non-birthing, (but imagined through collective delusion) but capable of birthing, persons.
Real pleasure
I began praying a few years ago that I would not worship my belly. (Who would want to worship that flabby mess anyway, am I right? You’d think if I were going to devote myself to it, it might have at least an ab or two.) It hasn’t happened over night. Clearly, this quest itself is, in-part, a journey to finally overthrow the last city-states tyrannized by the tum. Still, I am happy to say that I now find more pleasure in sitting down to read my Bible, or some other old book written by some brother or sister in Christ now long passed on, than I do from food or drink.
The Proud desire less, not more
C.S. Lewis had, as usual, something to say on this front as well:
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.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses
James says these pleasures are at war within us. We want what we can’t have, so we lash out. We pray for what we want. After all, Christ himself in John 14:13-14 says, Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. So, we pray, but we do not receive.
The prayer of the Proud
What gives? When you pray to win the lottery so you can do a lot of charitable giving from your new yacht, anchored in only the bluest of waters and festooned with a squad of champagne-sipping, bikini-clad influencers, God does not grant it. Praise be to God.
Forty-two
So what is the answer? How can we avoid the pitfalls of the Proud – the false wisdom, covetousness, selfish ambition, and obedience to the whims of our desires? How can we pray like the Wise, and have confidence our prayers will be answered?
Paul says that Christ will transform our bodies and will put our pleasures under his ultimate authority.
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
Philippians 3:10-21
If you are a Christian, Paul also testifies that you are free. You are free from the desires which dictated your former conduct and benefited you nothing.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:20-23
James says, that if we desire wisdom, we have only to ask in faith.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
James 1:5-8
Oh, you wanted bread? Here’s a rock, you glutton!
…O ye of little faith
Matthew 8:26 (KJV)
Do you believe that God will give you real wisdom? Can He can free you from your slavery to covetousness, selfishness, and desire? Will He impart to you eternal things which can bring greater pleasure than those things we are tempted to pursue? Jesus makes it clear that God will do so.
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:7-10
Adios, nos vemos
Time’s up children! This was a fun study. If you have doubts that Christ can set you free, please see my simple post, Day 8.1: Best Advice. Hope you will join me next time!
