One More Thought On James

I received one comment on my Jame’s blogs.

“I need to read your recent blogs again more carefully, but I it seems like you are pretty hard on James’s ideas - impatient with them as limited rather than looking for the nugget within.”  

My first response to this email is to ask:  What are the nuggets you find in the book of James.

I think the one outstanding nugget for me is the first part of chapter three when he writes about the tongue.

I am wiling to admit that I could very well be guilty of what is called “proof texting.”  

Using “A scriptural passage adduced as proof for a theological doctrine belief, or principle.”  (Websters)

That was not at all my intention.  

What I was trying to do is point out the parts of Jame’s dissertation that lead to a need to follow the rules — the law — in order to be a faithful part of God’s people.

It has been my observation, in the last thirty some years of ministry, that the Bible has been misused and abused.  It has been used to cloud the love of God in the name of right and wrong, good and bad, sinful and/or clean, faithful or unfaithful, worthy or unworthy.

A very black and white way of reading the Bible.

And in my opinion the Bible is not black and white.  There is a lot of gray.

I actually had my first taste of this Biblical distraction as a child.  I was outside playing, when a plane flew over our yard and dropped yellow pieces of paper down on our small dessert town.

The yellow paper said something about “the end of the world” and “being saved.”  It scared me. I took one of the papers to my mom and asked her what that all meant.  She just wrapped me in her arms and said something like:  “Oh sweetheart nobody knows this kind of information.”  She assured me that the world was not going to end that next week.  

I went back outside to play.  

However that kind of scary theology has not stopped over all these years.  Still today there are those who want us to believe that God is some ridged, wrathful and mean god sitting up in the sky just waiting to prove us sinful and unclean.

So yes, you could be right:

“It seems like you are pretty hard on James’s ideas - impatient with them as limited rather than looking for the nugget within.”

I am indeed impatient with anyone who tries to limit the love of God.

I am impatient with people who think they know it all. And are willing to make others feel less because they will not agree with their assessment of something —and/or  God. 

I am impatient with anyone who is not willing to sit and discuss possibilities.  But rather push their needs to convince.  

Having said that.  I am thinking that it may sound like I do just that with my belief that God cannot be limited.  

I am perfectly willing to say that I am convinced that we are made right with God only because of God’s graciousness, and unconditional acceptance, of our human nature. 

That we are “saved” only by God’s grace; because we have faith.  

Yes, faith as tiny, and possibly imperfect, as a seed.

Does that mean we can sit around on our butts and do nothing but have faith?  

Not at all!  It is because we have faith in such a loving and forgiving God that we gratefully love our sisters and brothers — our neighbor — no matter how close or how far away they may be.

¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1)

I choose to write more about this treasure of grace tomorrow.