Who Is Wise? A Reflection on James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a

I’m continually amazed — though I really shouldn’t be at this point in my life — at how religion can be a force for good in the world, but also a force of great evil, evil made all the more powerful by being couched in the language of faithfulness. We are certainly at a moment of truth for Christianity in the West. The public faces of Christianity are so at odds with each other as it make it confounding for many to know which is truly the faithful path. This is a theme I’ve returned to often here over the years (see also here, here, and here), but the general theme is that, according to the teaching of Jesus, we have to look at the fruit something bears in the world to determine whether it is of God or not. As it happens, today’s Epistle reading, from James 3-4 reinforces that sensibility through less metaphorical language.

It reads:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 3:13-4:3, 7-8A)

This is pretty straightforward but still worth unpacking a bit. How do we know our actions and beliefs come from true wisdom and understanding? First and foremost, it’s revealed in living a “good life,” which James immediately defines as involving “works … done with gentleness.” So we have a practical theology here — in which orthopraxy (doing the right thing) is centred over orthodoxy (believing and worshiping in the right way) — and an orthopraxy grounded in gentleness. (Hardly the first trait that comes to mind, sadly, when one thinks of ‘Christians’ in the public eye!) He then contrasts this with false, ungodly ‘wisdom’. Any time we have vocabulary about virtues and vices in the Bible, it’s worth taking a step back because these tend to be words that translations rarely capture well. Here, where the NSRV has “bitter envy,” the Greek refers to something like “sharp, bitter, or angry zeal” (remember, not all zeal for one’s faith is good. Zeal is more often a negative term in the Bible than a positive one!). What it translates as “selfish ambition” (eritheia in Greek) is of uncertain meaning, but the two most likely senses are either a willingness to do anything for money, or partisanship or factionalism. From the rest of the New Testament’s ethical teaching, both options are clearly sinful. The love of money is after all very contrary to the Gospel spirit (e.g., Matthew 6:24 & 19:21, Luke 3.14, 1 Timothy 6:10) and engaging in divisive behaviours runs against the New Testament’s clear teaching on peacemaking (Matthew 5:9, Luke 6:27, Romans 14:19, etc.). If we have such things in our heart, James tells us, we should not boast about them, for they are not of God. In contrast, true wisdom is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” and blessing comes “for those who make peace.”

The passage then claims that conflicts come from “cravings that are at war” within us. This is yet another example of the New Testament’s appropriation of the Hellenistic world’s basic understanding of how virtue and vice work (which was largely borrowed from Stoicism). As I’ve previously summarized this idea:

Stoic virtue ethics were grounded … in a lack of trust in our ability to see the world clearly, a state of affairs which, in their mind, leads to a loss of control and therefore to excess. They questioned the things people commonly chase after — pleasure, reputation, glory, riches — insisting that these are not good unless they are used well and for their proper function. The great fear for Stoics was of losing control over oneself and being carried away to excess by one’s desires for these things (called, ‘the passions’).

So here, James is putting conflict within this basic worldview: We all have appetites that drive us towards certain things; and when what we want clashes with what others want (either because we want different things for the group or the same thing for ourselves), conflict is the natural outcome. The answer, according to James is to interrogate and challenge the appetites; if they are for good things, we are to turn to God instead of our own wisdom for how to get them, and if they are for bad things, we are to flee from them entirely.

All of this is a lot like that famous (and infamously mis-attributed) saying about the two wolves inside each of us. The quality of our lives — and the quality of our faith — will depend on what we feed inside of us. If we stoke the fires of our anger and zeal, and stir the pot and increase division in the community, this is not of God. Instead, we are to ease the pressure, promote peace, and act with gentleness. That is true wisdom and will lead us to true faith.