Guest post by Rev. Jeff Meyers
This is a two-part, condensed version of my “Final Reflections & Summary” from my book Wisdom for Dissidents (full title: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Christian Dissidents).
In 1980 a friend approached me after church and handed me a manila file folder. “Read these and let me know what you think,” he said. I did. It turned out the folder was filled with samples of 3 or 4 Christian newsletters. These were newsletters giving Christian commentary on contemporary cultural issues—abortion, economics, art, and politics. After reading them, I mailed in a donation and a request for subscriptions to all of them.
I had just come out of a severely dispensational Christian community where everyone was convinced that the end of the world was upon us. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth was a Christian bestseller. Because the world was ending you don’t polish brass on a sinking ship, rather you wait for the ship to begin to sink and then Jesus will swoop down deus ex machina to snatch up Christians off the tilting deck and rapture us into heaven. This meant that careful thinking about what might be happening in American society and how Christians might make a difference was new to me. But I was 23 years old with a wife and newborn daughter which meant I was motivated to think about the future.
Well, we thought things were bad back then. Christians in the early 1980s were worried about the increasing secularization of American culture. A few months ago, we renovated our basement and I had to box up three walls of books. I had an entire bookshelf of books from the 1980s that analyzed the anti-Christian drift that was occurring in American society.
Today, however, the marginalization of Christians in education, culture, and politics has accelerated faster than anyone could have imagined even ten years ago, let alone in 1980.
And this has led to some interesting proposals from Christian leaders on how Christians ought to respond. Everything from the call to “faithful presence” by James Davidson Hunter, to the “benedict option” by Rod Dreher. And then there’s the Trump-inspired populism of the last few years. Now, Dreher is prepping us to suffer as martyrs in his recent book Live not by Lies.
Today, it seems to me that the first-century situation which called forth this letter is remarkably like what we are now experiencing in this country in at least two ways: 1) the marginalization, the exile, if you will, of Christians from mainstream culture, and 2) the call for justice.
When we see that things appear to be going from bad to worse in American culture, indeed, as there appears to be an escalation of moral, legal, and political degeneration that often breaks out into violence, and when increasingly Christian believers are targeted as the enemy, what action should Christians take? What should we do?
The best way to answer questions like these is to pay attention to the teaching of James in his letter. James answered the question: “What we need to be careful to avoid in our zeal to turn things around?” Much of his letter is about how not to change the world. So, for example, “the anger of man does not accomplish the justice/righteousness of God” (1:9).
There are certain temptations that readily present themselves to Christian leaders with a passion to change the world (doctors, teachers, pastors, elders, deacons, school teachers, cultural leaders, movement leaders, etc.), who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who long for God to rescue their lives and others’ lives from their oppressors.
These temptations are not from God. And to give into them does not bring about divine justice. They arise when we are lured and enticed by our own angry desire, which when conceived and gives birth to sin, and when it is fully grown brings not peace and justice, but breeds zealotry, political ambition, disorder, anarchy, violence, and ultimately death. This is exactly what James warns against in chapter 3:14-16. What are these temptations addressed in James’s letter?
The first temptation is to fail to listen carefully to the words of Jesus concerning the character of his kingdom and justice and the way it will be established in human communities. This is the “implanted word” (1:21) these disciples have heard and hopefully hid in their hearts so that they might not sin against the Lord. What they have of the Word of God is what they remember hearing. Because they have been dispersed from Jerusalem and the apostolic ministry, they have been cut off from the normal hearing of the Gospel and the life and teachings of Jesus. This letter is also chock full of references to the Gospel of Matthew, particularly Jesus’ sermon on the mount—the first Gospel written very early on and likely the one they have all heard read in their assemblies. They don’t have copies of it. No one does yet. But they have heard it read aloud and James hopes it has been implanted like a seed in their minds and hearts.
There is a direct relationship between the openness of people to God’s instruction and the state of the world. I remember coming back into the church community when I was in college in the 1970s. Everyone brought their Bibles to church. Everyone was in some Bible study. Christians were eager to hear the Word read and expounded. We came to church and Sunday school with wide-margin Bibles and notebooks to record what we were hearing. I still have my old New American Standard Bible filled with highlights, underlining, and copious notes in the margin.
Something changed over the years. I suspect it has to do with the glut of information available now online. But today most Christians don’t even carry Bibles to church. They mostly don’t take notes either. I don’t want to be overly nostalgic about those “good old days” and think that the answer is a return to a note-taking congregation on the Lord’s Day. Some of it is the fault of the church’s leadership. Most churches don’t have long Scripture readings on Sundays anymore. Why don’t we have an Old Testament, a Gospel, and an Epistle reading every Lord’s Day? Why don’t we recite and sing the Psalms every week? Why are people content with a single Bible verse or two projected in a PowerPoint presentation? The pastor then gives a Christian TED talk that is somehow related to the verse but usually contains more emotional stories than it does biblical exposition. Is that all we need every week?
So are we faithfully responding to the first temptation? The first temptation is to fail to listen carefully to the words of Jesus concerning the character of his kingdom and justice and the way it will be established in human communities. As long as Christian people do not hear regularly “the mature instruction” from all of Scripture (1:25), we will continue to be misled about the nature of Jesus’ kingdom and the methods of advancing it. If we want “freedom” and “justice,” indeed, “a harvest of righteousness” (3:18), then we will pay careful attention to the “law of liberty” (1:25).
The second temptation typically dogs opinion leaders in the church, those called to speak and guide other Christians with their tongues. What is that? It is to fail to attend to our personal growth in grace and maturity while we are engaged in public teaching and leadership. James’s letter is written to the leaders of these exiled Christian communities. Twelve times at key junctures in the letter James addresses “the brothers.” They are “the teachers” (3:1) whose tongues are guiding the entire body of believers for whom they are responsible (3:1-12). But their behavior betrays their lack of maturity. They are “double-minded” and therefore “unstable” (1:7). They speak without thinking and are quick to react in anger and malice against their enemies (1:19-21). They have not grown in their obedience because they are “deceiving themselves” (1:22). They hear the Word, but do not respond in obedience (1:23-25). They think that the authenticity of their “religion” will be evident in what they say, rather than by what they do (1:26-27). These brothers are misbehaving on every level, but their unbridled tongues proclaim their faith nonetheless (2:1-26). By the time we reach the end of chapter 3, and the first half of chapter 4, the magnitude of misbehavior among these brothers is shocking—zealotry, selfish ambition, anarchy, vile practices, covetousness, murder, violence, pride, and idolatrous spiritual adultery.
It is striking to compare the disgraceful duplicity among these early-church Christian brothers to the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders in the Gospel accounts. The nascent church was in danger of ignoring everything Jesus taught about leadership in his kingdom. Would it come to this—meet the new boss, same as the old boss? This challenge is addressed all through the New Testament epistles. Paul warns Timothy, “Watch your life and teaching closely. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:16).
There are certain predictable traps that pastors who want to be “movement leaders” fall into.
We think we are on a higher plane because we have this altruistic social vision for peace and justice. We are above the law and above common morality. Since our cause is righteous, and in our minds will eventually benefit the masses, some liberties could be taken in the pursuit of these righteous ends.
The challenge for Christian movement leaders is that we want to spin out grand theories about why things are going wrong and what needs to be changed, and we want to inspire others to action for the sake of the kingdom. . . but then we ourselves will ignore the more common, ordinary acts of charity and obedience. This is a huge concern of James all throughout his letter. Christian leaders and pastors that style themselves instructors and visionaries will exult in rhetoric designed to move others to act but we ourselves ignore obedience in common life, if you will because we are called to greater deeds (2:26-27, 14-17).
What is worse, leaders too often will secretly look down their noses at these ordinary activities as not powerful enough and come to despise anything that does not directly engage the larger theater of political and governmental affairs. James, however, challenges us to remember that the way of the cross is the way of transformation, the way that God has ordained to change the world. And the way of the cross necessarily involves self-denial, sacrifice, treating others better than yourself, loving those that God has put in your path, in your life— not loving some ideal husband or wife or child or parent or neighbor or friend or fellow workmate. But being kind and longsuffering and patient toward that flesh-and-blood person right there before you in your home or in your office. We are tempted to think that these ordinary activities are not effective, not powerful and that they won’t get the job done. But we forget that our primary calling in this world is in fact to create a social reality, a civilization, and a kingdom that is precisely characterized by this kind of loving, charitable, peaceful behavior (3:13-18).
Jeff and his wife Chris give thanks for 42 years of marriage and four children: Rebekah, Lauren, Julia, and Jeffrey Jr. Their children are all now happily married and beginning families of their own. They have five grandchildren.
In his spare time, Jeff enjoys walking, competitive handgun shooting, hunting, drone photography, science fiction, and cooking. Pastor Meyers is the author of The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship, as well as two popular commentaries. One on Ecclesiastes A Table in the Mist, and another recently published commentary on James Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Christian Dissidents.
