Posts from 2020 (Page 3)

I’d like to think that God answers all my prayers, but he doesn’t (at least not by saying yes). Can you relate? It happens for dozens of reasons, and James gives us one of them here: You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (James 4:3). I can think of specific times when at the time it seemed like God was just ignoring me, but now I know why he refused to…

Been in a fuss lately? Maybe it was with your spouse or kids. Could’ve been a co-worker or neighbor. Maybe even someone at church. It doesn’t really matter what it was about, or who the person was, but I can predict a couple of things: One, it was unpleasant, and two, somebody was being selfish. Those two facts are amazingly consistent. Something pretty bad was going on in the church James was writing to, and he gives us several hints.…

You can just see Jesus in some people. Folks who’ve been with the Lord for a while—really been with him—have a different spirit about them, it seems to me. We’ve all been around the guy who argues just for the pure fun of it. He’s always mad at someone, always spoiling for a fight, always looking for an excuse to lose his temper. That’s not Jesus. Notice the contrast James makes in this passage. He says that jealousy and selfish…

Emphasizing this part of James “would not be warmly received in the modern church,” writes one commentator (K.A. Richardson). That’s an interesting thing to say. Surely those of us in the church wouldn’t shy away from listening to any part of the Bible, would we? Here’s the verse he’s talking about: “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth” (James 3:14). At first glance, the verse might…

Are you journaling?  Maybe you’re keeping a log somewhere of your feelings and activities during the quarantine.  I will admit, I haven’t been keeping any regular record of this year’s events.  But I thought I would at least use this space to write about a few things I hope I don’t forget after things go back to “normal.” We open up our church bulletins and read the words (usually at the end of our prayer list) “shut-ins.” I’m ashamed that…

The hallowed halls of academia aren’t really known for fostering a spirit of humility. Not always, of course, but often there’s a temptation toward pride that comes along with being a notch above one’s peers in intelligence and education. James would call the smart-but-proud person a fool, or at least he seems to imply that here: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from…

Perhaps it’s somewhat oversimplified, but I agree with the gist of what Esau McCaulley wrote in an opinion piece to The New York Times this past week: “What about the rest of us [who aren’t medical professionals]? This remains certain in the ever-shifting narrative of Covid-19: the most effective ways of stopping the spread of the virus is by social distancing (avoiding large gatherings) and good personal hygiene (washing our hands). The data suggests that what the world needs now…

Mark Twain famously quipped, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it is the parts that I do understand.” I’m not sure exactly how he meant that, but in some ways I agree with him. There’s a lot about the Bible I don’t grasp, but I’ve got plenty to do just to work on the parts I get. Here’s one of the parts I understand: God wants us to do what he says. You…

Sometimes we put sins into categories, probably without even thinking: “really bad sins,” “bad sins,” and “not-so-bad sins.” Sure, I’m a sinner, but none of mine are the really bad ones. I’d never commit those. Like murder. Or adultery. My sins are smaller stuff like sometimes thinking bad thoughts, losing my temper with my kids, spreading a little gossip, or being impatient and irritable. Everybody does that stuff. Sound familiar? The Christians James was writing to apparently made the same…

Love your neighbor. It just sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? It’s such a nice thought, and pretty much everybody agrees that we ought to do it. Do we? Of course, we do, or at least we think we do. We know Jesus commanded it. We know we’re supposed to love everyone. James apparently thought it was a big deal. He wrote, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor…

I took a class on the Civil Rights movement once, and I’ve often thought of something the professor told us. “We’re all prejudiced. Every single one of us.” I don’t know if you agree with him, but I think he touched on an important point. Let me reword it slightly: We’re all tempted to view people according to superficial qualities. In fact, we do it so often and so subconsciously that we might not even notice it. We put people…

We live in the world, and it’s hard to keep it from rubbing off on us. Sometimes it’s tempting just to escape it, isn’t it? Move to the proverbial deserted island or to a rural mountain in Tibet. Some believers in church history tried that route, retreating to caves, deserts, or monasteries, but it didn’t always work well. Tempting as it might be sometimes, God never called us to retreat from the world. So here we are. We live and…