Suffering

The scriptures referred to are James 5:13-20.

All things in this life have a cause. The cause is either known to us or unknown. The known causes of events may be ourselves, something or someone other than ourselves or a combination of the two. And yet not everyone accepts all of this. Especially when we are talking about suffering.

Though it is obvious that some of our suffering is caused by what we do or neglect to do, as in the case of drinking too much or of not eating our vegetables, there are people who refuse to acknowledge their part in their own suffering. They blame others, or the universe, or God. Equally there are people who blame themselves for everything, such as illnesses or misfortunes that their loved ones suffer, even if there was no way they could have caused it or that they could have prevented it. The first instance is denial; the second is magical thinking.

What complicates matters is when the causes of our suffering are partly our actions or inaction and partly things over which we have no control. Like when we inherit a predisposition to a certain condition, say, a family history of heart disease, and then we do things that ensure it, such as smoke, eat bad foods and refuse to exercise. Your family history is not your fault. However, doing things that exacerbate it or hasten its manifestation in your life are on you. Again some people are born with Type 1 or juvenile diabetes. That's not their fault. But once they find out, if they do not take the proper steps to manage it, like take their blood sugar regularly, take their insulin, watch what they eat, etc. any preventable medical complications are at least, in part, their fault.

Substance abuse works the same way. Some of us are very susceptible, given that it runs in our family or that we have suffered major trauma, especially in childhood. We should take steps not to trigger an addiction. Or, having the addiction, we should get help. Today there are therapies and support groups for just about everything. Again denial of all responsibility is not helpful, nor is taking all the blame and wallowing in helplessness.

In medicine, determining the cause of a disease or disorder helps determine the treatment. They used to think stomach ulcers were caused only by stress. The treatments weren't very effective. My grandmother died of complications following ulcer surgery. Her recovery was compromised partly due to her diabetes and partly due to her smoking. But what's sad is that a few years later an Australian doctor discovered that most ulcers are caused by a bacteria and could be cured by antibiotics. Which is why I don't despair but hold onto to hope that the cause of ME/CFS will be discovered, especially since it is nearly identical to long-haul Covid and other post-viral forms of fatigue many are suffering, including a lot of doctors. Effective treatment depends on determining the actual cause. It's why, if the cause is a virus, you don't treat it with a medicine designed to take care of parasites in a different species.

The human penchant for making everything binary—not my fault or all my fault—complicates dealing with suffering. It doesn't help when people bring that mindset to the Bible. Because you can pick and choose passages of scripture that, taken in isolation, seem to blame all suffering on ourselves, or on Satan, or even on God.

There are passages that attribute some diseases to sin. Like our reading from James. He writes, “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” Taken by itself, without reference to other scriptures, it seems to imply a direct connection between being sick and sinning. As when the paralyzed man is lowered through the roof by his friends, and Jesus says to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And he is healed. (Mark 2:1-12)

So are all illnesses caused by sin?

No. When they see a man born blind, Jesus' disciples ask whose sin caused his disability, his or his parents. Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” And he heals him. (John 9) Notice that not only does Jesus dismiss sin as the cause, he doesn't give an alternate cause. Instead, he sees it as an opportunity to show God's power and grace.

In other cases, Jesus simply says to the person that their faith has healed them, such as with the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. (Mark 5:34) There is no reference to sin or forgiveness. And significantly, when he is said to have thrown demons out of people, he doesn't mention any sin on the sufferer's part. (Mark 1:23-26) Those people, most of whom we would classify as having a mental or neurological illness, are seen entirely as victims of their affliction. (Mark 5:1-15; 9:20-27) And not all of his healings involved casting out demons. Just like a modern physician, Jesus recognized that different diseases have different causes.

Nor, parenthetically, does Jesus attribute all disasters to sin. He points out that the 18 people killed when a tower in Siloam fell on them were not worse sinners than anyone else. (Luke 13:4-5) Job asserts that none of the disasters nor the disease he suffered were due to sin. And God agrees and sides with Job over his so-called comforters who tried to defend God by saying that bad things do not happen to good people. (Job 42:7) They do. And God's reply to Job implies that it is sometimes beyond our understanding. (Job 38-41)

As a nurse and as a pastor, I have talked to people who thought their illness was a punishment from God. Rather than argue the cause, I asked if they had confessed whatever their sin was to God. They said yes. And I quoted them 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Then I told them they could stop beating themselves up because Jesus took all the punishment for our sins. In this way I was at least able to help heal their spiritual ills.

Yes, sometimes we are responsible for our suffering. If you get shot doing a drug deal, or hurt in a car crash caused by driving when you're drunk, or break bones trying to do a back flip off your garage roof into a pool while your friend videos it for the internet, then you are simply suffering the consequences for your own decisions and actions.

But if you get injured because a drunk driver hit you, or you're shot by a stray bullet not meant for you, or get sick because someone else has refused to take rather simple precautions to prevent spreading a pandemic, you are suffering the consequences of someone else's actions. It's their fault. But why does God allow you to suffer? Books have been written on this but let's just consider two things.

First, we live in a physical world and so our actions have physical consequences not just for ourselves but for others. We can hug people or strangle them, using the very same hands. We can create medicines or create poisons, using the very same brains. We can comfort someone or make them sadder, using the very same mouth. So what possible mechanism could allow us to do one but not the other?

Second, if you remove the negative consequences to bad decisions and actions, many people will continue to make bad decisions or do bad things. Removing the results would be like magically making it so that a child touching a hot stove doesn't get her finger tips burned. That child will do it again. We try to teach our kids not to do such things to prevent that but sometimes they don't listen. Suffering the consequences drives the lesson home for most. But some people continue to do evil or stupid things despite suffering the consequences. Removing the consequences would not improve their moral or critical thinking and would probably lead even more people to not care what they do.

Nor would we really like that. There is an old Twilight Zone episode called A Nice Place to Visit about a petty crook named Rocky Valentine who feels he never gets a break. He is killed in a shootout with the cops and finds himself in the afterlife. His genial host caters to his every whim. He can drink all the booze he wishes with no hangover. He can have all the women he wants. He can play any gambling game he wishes and he always wins. He can even plan a heist and it goes perfectly. Though he can now indulge himself in any vice without any negative consequences, these activities give him no pleasure. Facing an eternity of this, he tells his host that maybe he doesn't belong in heaven. He ought to be in the “other place.” To which his grinning host replies, “Whatever gave you the idea you were in heaven, Mr. Valentine? This IS the other place!”

Asking God to remove the possibility of evil is asking him either to remove our freedom to think and make our own decisions, rendering us puppets or robots, or to remove the effects of our actions, rendering us impotent and all we do meaningless. As Mr. Valentine learns, you should be careful what you wish for.

Finally, there is the suffering that comes from neither ourselves or others, like natural disasters or certain diseases we don't bring upon ourselves. Some attribute them to the devil. Indeed Jesus justifies healing a woman on the Sabbath by saying, “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from its stall, and lead it to water? Then shouldn't this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be released from this imprisonment on the Sabbath?” (Luke 13:15-16) But if Jesus can release her, why did God permit her suffering in the first place?

There are passages that attribute everything, even things we consider evil like calamities, to God. (Isaiah 45:7; Jonah 3:10) It need not be his direct action; it may be merely that he permits it. Even in Job, Satan is not allowed to do anything to Job beyond what God permits. (Job 1:12; 2:6) So if he is in charge, and allows undeserved suffering, isn't God ultimately responsible for it? And if God is love, what are we to make of this?

I don't want to shut down consideration of the problem by saying things like “God has a plan,” though he undoubtedly does. And it may be that God permits suffering because of some greater good. For instance, the pain of a vaccine shot and the brief unpleasant side effects some of us experience are offset by the protection against severe illness and death it confers. Sometimes pain is an acceptable price for life, as we see in childbirth. Still those kinds of pain are easily related to the positive outcomes that result. Some suffering doesn't seem to be connected in any causal way to any specific good result.

For example, the vaccinations we give babies seem to them totally random painful events permitted by parents who otherwise love them. They can't understand what good it does them. It doesn't seem to bestow any positive benefits, like superpowers. Its effect—not getting horribly sick in the future—is not something they can see. We might be in the same situation as these infants, unable to understand just why our heavenly Father is allowing painful things to happen to us.

The appendix used to be considered worse than useless, with no purpose other than getting inflamed and bursting, spreading potentially deadly infection. Surgeons used to routinely remove healthy ones if they happened to be operating in the lower abdomen. Now we realize the appendix has several useful functions, like storing healthy bacteria and supporting the immune system. Just because something doesn't seem to have a reason doesn't mean it has none. It may be we just don't see it. Or we don't see it yet.

And that may be why God does not always grant us healing. Paul had been given the gift of healing others. (Acts 14:8-10; 20:9-12) Yet in 2^nd Corinthians 12 he tells us that he had some unspecified affliction he called a “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.” We don't know what it was, though I think it was some vision problem. (Galatians 4:15; 6:11) He says that he asked God on 3 occasions to remove it. “But he said to me, 'My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'” (2 Corinthians 12:9) Paul, the brilliant and tireless apostle for Christ, who spread the gospel over more of the Roman empire than anyone else, was reminded he was not in control of everything in his life, not even his body. And he realized it kept him from getting arrogant. (2 Corinthians 12:7)

And as C.S. Lewis points out, the existence of evil makes possible what he calls “complex goodness.” In a perfect world you can exhibit simple goodness, like being nice. But only in a world with evil and suffering can there exist forms of goodness like courage, comfort, healing, peace-making, forgiveness, self-control and self-sacrifice. These are the tools God gives us with which to face suffering and mitigate or alleviate it.

Nor is God a stranger to suffering. Through his Son, he knows hunger, thirst, exhaustion, betrayal, ridicule, pain, loss and death. Whatever relationship God has to the causes of suffering, on the cross he took his own medicine. After an eternity in the presence of the Father, the Son of God even experienced separation from him. He descended into the hell of abandonment by God on a more profound level than any of us with a temporal relationship with the divine can ever experience. And he did it for us. His suffering served the greatest purpose of all: to save us from suffering the full extent of the consequences of our sin, that same separation from God, the source of all goodness.

In the last book of the Bible, we are given a glimpse of a new heaven and a new earth, a new creation for people who are new creations in Christ. And we are told, “God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to be.” (Revelation 21:3-4) And that's what keeps me going. I will endure mourning and crying and pain and even death in this world if it means that one day they will be no more forever. And on that day, at least some of the tears Jesus' scarred hands will wipe away from my eyes will be tears of joy. 

Worldly Wisdom

The scriptures referred to are James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a.

A few weeks ago we talked about God's wisdom. But in today's passage from James we hear him speak of another type of wisdom, one that “does not come from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.” But how can such a way of looking at things ever be called wise? Maybe you'll see it if we call it “street smarts.” Or cynical thinking. And it can steer people around certain problems in dealing with other folks.

This is the kind of devilishly clever thinking we find entertaining in a heist film or a story about a conman. The protagonist analyzes the people he is trying to con, picks out a particular desire or fear they have and works out a way to exploit it. Sherlock Holmes uses this tactic in the story of A Scandal in Bohemia. (Spoiler alert for a 130 year old short story!) Irene Adler has an incriminating photo of Holmes' client, the king of Bohemia. The detective adopts the disguise of a clergyman, defends her against a mob he's paid to threaten her, appears to be knocked out and she has her servants bring him into her house. Then Watson throws a smoke bomb in through her window and, thinking the mob has set her house on fire, Adler goes to the place she has hidden the photo. Holmes played upon her sympathy for a wounded clergyman trying to protect her and her desire to save what was most precious to her. It is a very clever plan based on Holmes' cynical evaluation of women. However, Irene Adler has the last laugh and thereafter Holmes refers to the opponent who bested him as simply “The Woman.”

You can get far in worldly affairs by playing on people's desires and fears and gullibility. Multilevel marketing schemes do it all the time. They offer people a way to get rich and be their own bosses through a plan in which they simply have to sell some products and recruit a certain number of people to do the same. You get a cut of your recruits' proceeds and pay a portion of yours to the person who recruited you. The first problem is you have to pay a large amount to get your starter kit. And you have to recruit something like 10 people each month. They also have to buy starter kits and recruit 10 people a month. The real problem is that in order for that to work you and your “downline,” all the people under you, would have to, by the end of one year, recruit many times the number of people who exist in the world. The math doesn't work out. If it weren't for the selling of the products, it would be labeled a pyramid scheme. 99% of people involved in MLMs, as they call them, rarely make any profits and in fact often lose tons of money, sometimes going into bankruptcy. The 1% at the very top, however, can become very rich. So you might deem the folks who create these schemes worldly wise. But that is not the wisdom from above.

Oscar Wilde said that a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Wisdom is about appreciating and preserving value. But worldly wisdom values the wrong things.

James rightly connects this earthly wisdom to selfish ambition and coveting and envy. People want to aggrandize themselves and they use worldly stratagems to achieve fame and power. They want to have what others have—wealth and control over people—and they use folks' fears and desires to manipulate them. They envy what others are and they try to achieve the impossible: become someone other than who they were created to be.

And these things can work...in the short term. Bernie Madoff made quite a good living running the largest Ponzi scheme ever. Until the fraud was inevitably exposed. He died in prison and one of his sons hung himself. Look up Madoff in Wikipedia and under his name it says simply “American fraudster.” Jeffrey Epstein also did well until ending up in jail, dead. Al Capone's reign as the fabled crime boss of Chicago only lasted 7 years. He was just 33 when he went to federal prison. He was released 7 years later because his brain was deteriorating due to late stage syphilis. He died at age 48, his mentality reduced to that of a 12 year old child. The fruits of worldly wisdom turn out to be rotten.

Again these things can work...superficially. You can get a following through tricks and manipulation, but eventually you will be found out and your popularity will dry up. The mayflies of social media have their brief turn on You Tube or Instagram and, unable to maintain their facade, reveal their naked narcissism and their fame turns to infamy. Just recently an influencer abruptly closed down her You Tube channel and other accounts when a video she posted of her forcing her crying child to pose for her went viral. You can only fake being a good and empathetic person for so long...and then it's “So long!”

It's interesting that the NRSV translation uses the word “cravings.” The underlying Greek word is the one from which we get the English word “hedonism.” It means “strong desires, or passions.” So “cravings” is appropriate. Especially since we now know so much about addictions. In the Great Courses series on The Addictive Brain, Dr. Thad Polk explains that the neurotransmitter dopamine is not so much about pleasure as wanting or craving. Its role is good when it motivates us to, say, eat. Mice engineered not to produce dopamine will starve rather than just walk to their food. But it can be bad when a substance or activity makes the brain's dopamine system more sensitive and easier to activate. That increases the amount of dopamine released and creates an anticipation of a reward. That craving highly motivates the person to pay increased attention to and learn how to trigger the reward again and again. And that leads to addiction.

James also talks about “your cravings that are at war within you.” These cravings don't have to rise to the level of addiction to throw our lives out of balance. They needn't take over one's life completely; they can just take up an inordinate amount of one's time or energy or throw off one's direction in life. James speaks of disorder. If your priorities are in the wrong order, it will deform your life.

Jesus not only summarized the moral law into 2 commandments, he did so in the right order. The greatest commandment, the one that comes first is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31) So our priorities are to God first, to other people second and to ourselves third. But what is the order of priorities in worldly wisdom?

“Believe in yourself.” “Follow your dreams and don't let anyone turn you away from them.” “Do what makes you happy.” In other words, your number one priority is looking out for number one, yourself. We even feed this disordered way of looking at life to our children in Disney movies and TV shows. It's when the hero finally believes in himself that he is able to defeat the bad guy. But doesn't the bad guy believe in himself too? In fact, isn't the villain's motivation following his dreams? “Follow your dreams” is also an accurate way of stating the credo of a serial killer. One of the most chilling moments of the British series Torchwood comes when the heroes capture the leader of a family of cannibals and ask him why he would do such a thing. “It makes me happy,” he says.

The pursuit of one's own happiness is not adequate to serve as the top priority in life. Selfish people are not really happy anyway or they wouldn't continue to pursue it. Instead they try again and again and harder and harder to capture it. But lasting happiness eludes them. And companies know this, building their business models on not satisfying but stoking their customers' cravings. Thus we have fast foods that do not fill us up but make us eat more and more. We have video games and TV shows and social media posts that make us want to play and watch them more and more. They want to turn us into addicts of what they sell. “More, Ever More” is their motto. It's also the motto of cancer.

What about pursing the happiness of others as a top priority? Well, that's not good if we follow the route of trying to satisfy their cravings. That's simply off-loading the problem from oneself onto another. Satisfying their needs is a better aim. The problem is doing that runs you right up against selfishness, your own and others'.

First off, it's hard to be altruistic all the time. I think that's why we often find that someone who seems to devote their lives to others has a dark side. They say to themselves, “I've been so good I deserve a little something for myself.” And so heads of charities often live like kings. As do so-called public servants. Sometimes, people who do much good publicly, like certain religious figures, do evil in private. They still aren't free from their cravings.

The other problem is that if you try to satisfy the needs of others, beyond, say, your family, you run into the fact that other people aren't really interested in helping you. As we've said, a consumer culture doesn't want to satisfy people. Yes, people need a regular supply of basic healthy foods but not more and more. People don't overindulge in fruits and vegetables like they do soda and chips and candy and ice cream.

Yes, people need housing but, if they are poor, they aren't going to buy a bigger and more expensive one in a few years, let alone a second vacation home.

Today a cellphone is necessary to do many things, even to do your job, but how is a phone company to survive if everyone is content with a basic phone and doesn't want to trade it in every few years for the latest model with all the new bells and whistles?

People need healthcare but the companies who have made big money in health don't just handle basic diseases but peddle cures for ED and sell opioids that really aren't designed for long-term pain but for long-term addiction. One reason bacteria are winning the war on infection is that antibiotics aren't a big money maker. People take one or two rounds of antibiotics when they get an infection and that's it. In a decade the bacteria have built up a resistance to that antibiotic. So many companies don't waste money on researching new antibiotics.

That's good worldly wisdom at work. The big money isn't to be made in meeting needs, but rather in creating demands for more new stuff that people really don't need. Come up with something along those lines and companies will throw money at you. Want to help feed, house and care for people who aren't big consumers and you have to search for what few grants are out there. And I think that is a reason why so many people in helping professions—nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers, even clergy—are getting discouraged and dropping out of their professions and sometimes ending their lives.

If worldly wisdom has any use for God, it is in last place, to try to make people feel good about the above, the endless and futile pursuit of happiness. The worldly use God to gloss over the flaws of the system of living for oneself. There are thousands of gurus on the internet telling people what they want to hear. Really popular slogans are: “You can create your own reality.” “You can heal yourself with your mind alone, by getting rid of negative thoughts.” “God wants you to be rich and powerful and happy.” And, inevitably, “You are God.” It's BS but people eat it up. They click “Follow.” As opposed to following a God who requires you to flip your priorities and love him above all and then others and then yourself. A God who asks you to be content with what you have and generous to others. Contentment is a terrible business model.

James says, “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 and hypocrisy.” Sounds a bit like Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) It also overlaps with his description of Christian love: “Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6) And those common qualities shouldn't surprise us because God's wisdom is all about love. Jesus is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30) and God is love (1 John 4:8). Jesus Christ is God Incarnate or the divine love made physical. (John 1:14) He demonstrated in his life the two commandments to love God and love others as oneself in that order. The wisdom from above is not how to get ahead in the world but how to love God and others as Jesus does.

Worldly wisdom leads to conflicts, as James points out. Peace comes from accepting and following the wisdom from above, Jesus. And in Jesus, our cravings end because in him there is enough. In Jesus there is more than enough; there is abundance. An abundance of what we really need. There is wisdom, there is meaning, there is purpose. There is forgiveness, there is healing, there is joy. There is peace, there is contentment, there is love for all.

The Right Word

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 50:4-9a and James 3:1-12.

I am reading a fascinating book called Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. The title is in part a play on words for languages like English and Spanish. The book is an examination of the special vocabulary developed by not only religious cults but also multilevel marketing companies and fitness movements and social media gurus, all of which can be described as somewhat cultish, the other meaning of the word. And she makes a good case that not just inventing new words but changing the meaning of existing words is one of the tools that charismatic leaders use to create a group that sees itself as different from other people. The insider jargon gives a sense of identity as well as supposed insights into the world and reality that are at variance with how the average person perceives them.

Part of the reason Montell takes this approach is her education in linguistics and part of it is the difficulty of defining a cult. Most mainstream religions started as cults, she says. But today the term cult, once an objective term for adoration of a god, has come to have a purely negative connotation. Say the word cult and people think of “charismatic leaders, mind-altering behaviors, sexual and financial exploitation, an us-versus-them mentality towards nonmembers, and an ends-justify-the-means philosophy.” But some cult-like groups may not be evil. Think Weight Watchers. It is a group with rituals and jargon and rules intended to change people's thinking and behavior but the goal is to lose weight and eat in a healthy way. So it is a little bit cultish but it's not destructive.

There is a difference between benign groups or clubs or churches and destructive cults like the “People's Temple” or the “Children of God” or the Waco “Branch Davidians” or “Heaven's Gate.” In a destructive cult they not only try to control how you think and act, but also cut you off from family and friends outside their group and either literally fight to keep you from leaving or go after you with everything they've got if you do leave.

Though Montell emphasizes that you create a destructive cult through language, she does admit it takes a charismatic leader delivering it in a compelling way. Nowadays Hitler's style may seem over-the-top when seen in close-up but he managed to get stadiums of people excited about his hate-filled ideology. And today there is a way of doing this that does not require an exciting speaking style or even speaking at all: social media. And I can't wait to see how Montell dissects that.

What intrigues me is the use of social media like Twitter, which is chiefly words, to do what destructive cults do: include people into a chosen group or excommunicate them. Today celebrities, especially those known for actually doing things like writing, acting, singing, playing sports, etc., can cause a great stir by what they say and more importantly how they say it. God forbid they use language with less than surgical precision, or else they might say something that would pass muster a year ago but now is considered heresy. Language always changes but whereas in the past you might get laughed at for using an old-fashioned phrase, today you can get hounded off the internet for not referring to people or issues using this year's proper terminology. And if you ever said in an interview 10 years ago something deemed terrible now, even if you were joking then, you could lose your present job.

Now on the one hand, I want people held accountable for saying things that denigrate classes of people by race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation or the like. But if the person shows they understand why it was wrong and that they have actually changed, they need to be forgiven. Hopefully all of us are smarter than we were a decade or so ago.

But if someone simply hasn't updated their list of acceptable buzzwords or if they sincerely and intelligently question the latest form of orthodoxy, they shouldn't be buried under a pile of invective or death threats. Let's have a calm discussion of what may be an innocent mistake or a legitimate question, not call in the Spanish Inquisition.

For this reason I no longer believe the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Because it's obvious that words can in fact do great harm. And if people had taken seriously what James said 2000 years ago in our passage from the lectionary, they would know that.

I am not going to go line by line through the passage because a lot of it is just metaphors. But his point is clear: for all that words are just shaped vibrations of air, or squiggles on paper, or symbols on screens, they can be tremendously destructive.

But what makes them so is really their intent as revealed in their contents. What bothers me about the habit of media to jump on anyone who misspoke is the assumption that they did so on purpose and to cause harm. It's as if those criticizing had never had anything come out of their mouths the wrong way. There is a famous edition of the Bible called the “Wicked Bible” because one commandment came out “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Funny, yes, but obviously a typo. That's not what the publisher intended to print. But if a prominent Christian did that on Twitter, within seconds people would be questioning that person's morality. Others would be making jokes and only a very few would be saying, “Guys, it was a mistake. Lighten up!” But even fewer would simply chuckle and scroll past it, understanding it was a slip and resisting the temptation to pile on.

Good reading and good listening require 2 things: being able to observe the exact way somebody expresses a thought and being able to discern what they actually mean. Ignoring the context is a good way to twist isolated words or sentences into something other than was intended. People do it with the Bible all the time. It's intended to bring us closer to God but some folks use it to do the opposite. That's why Paul tells Timothy that a false teacher will have “an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt minds...” (1 Timothy 6:4-5) That sounds like social media, doesn't it?

James points out the paradox of how we use our tongues. “With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” James is referring to the fact that how we treat human beings is how we also treat God. When God makes his covenant with Noah, the father of the rebooted human race, he prohibits murder precisely because people are made in God's image. (Genesis 9:6) Killing a human being is symbolic deicide. And then when Jesus came we literally killed God.

Jesus taught us that we do or do not do to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, and the immigrant, whom he calls his siblings, we do or do not do to him. It stands to reason that when we insult and denigrate others we are doing it to him as well. In fact in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “...whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says 'Fool' will be sent to fiery hell.” (Matthew 5:22) Just for saying something hurtful?

Words are powerful. Anne Frank and her family were sent to the concentration camp, because someone used words to tell the Nazis about their hiding place. Pope Urban II started the crusades by giving a speech, which said of the inevitable killing and destruction “God wills it!” The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon began with Bin Laden and his followers discussing how to hurt the US. Ideas become words which become actions. We all have silly or unChristian thoughts from time to time. As my wife often tells me, you don't have to say everything that pops into your head.

Christians should control their tongues. James warns us that the tongue is a fire. And Christians should definitely avoid inflammatory talk. If it will probably generate more heat than light, keep it to yourself.

Which means avoiding insulting others, as we've seen. But the Bible also condemns gossip and the passing on of rumors. (1 Timothy 5:13) Such things might be true but they might not, and the Bible definitely condemns lying and falsehoods. (Leviticus 19:11; Psalm 34:13) But even if a rumor is true, the real question is whether passing it on does any good or whether it just makes someone look bad. (Proverbs 20:19)

You shouldn't shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater falsely, of course. But when there is a fire...well, you still shouldn't shout it and cause a panic, but you should go and tell someone in charge so they can get people out in a safe and orderly fashion. Warning people of actual danger is not a negative form of speech. But be careful how you do it.

However, what we should be concentrating on is using speech in a constructive way. Yes, a fire can burn down your house if used carelessly. But used properly it can heat your house, cook your food, and give you light. In the same way, like anything powerful, words can do a lot of damage if misused but they can do a lot of good if used to help others as God intended. Paul says, “You must let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is beneficial for building up the one in need, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Ephesians 4:29)

Again this doesn't mean never criticizing something that is wrong or harmful but do it constructively. “I like this! Did you notice this one thing, though? I can see how this feature could cause problems. How do you think we can avoid that?” Focus on fixing the problem, rather than trying to fix the blame. Don't attack the person; attack the problem together.

We could all use words of encouragement and appreciation. Most people are doing the best they can. Let them know you see that and you appreciate what they are doing. So that you can, as Isaiah says in today's passage, “sustain the weary with a word.”

But also let them know that you like or love them for themselves, and not just when they are useful. We are not like the trains in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe, where useful is the chief measure of one's worth. As individuals created by God in his image, and redeemed by Jesus Christ on the cross, we have inherent worth. We are not merely what we do.

Of course, there are times, when comforting someone who is suffering an unspeakable tragedy, that the best thing to do is not speak. As it says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time to speak and a time to keep silent. (Ecclesiastes 3:7). Words are powerful but they are not magic and they cannot replace a look, a clasp of the hand, or a hug. Nor do words replace necessary actions. As James said last week, if someone is hungry, don't feed them a line about having faith: feed them food. At such times, actions speak louder than words.

We live according to God's Word. But even God thought that it would be much more powerful if his Word became flesh. And the gospels do not just record what Jesus said but also what he did. What Jesus did speaks volumes about what God is like. And while Paul gives us a great definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, I don't think it would mean as much if Jesus hadn't shown us what love looks like by dying for us.

There are lots of dead religious figures and philosophers who left us a legacy of words. What is significant is that God did not let death have the last word when it came to Jesus. He raised him again. And once they saw and touched and ate with Jesus and were breathed on by him and sent out with his words ringing in their ears, the disciples couldn't shut up about him. They proclaimed the good news of Jesus, the living expression of God's love. And that's what should be on our tongues at every opportunity.

Bully or Hero?

The scriptures referred to are Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 and James 2:1-17.

On a podcast about sword and sorcery movies, they mentioned one that I loved as a kid, The Magic Sword. And the host pointed out that the hero is really a bit of a jerk. He is the adopted son of a good witch. But he spends his time looking into her magic pool at a princess he's never met as she bathes in a river. When she is captured by an evil wizard, he tricks his mother, locking her in her laboratory to steal the gifts he was not to receive till his 21^st birthday: a magic sword, magic armor, a magic horse and 6 knights. Then he goes off to the king's castle and forces his way onto the rescue mission for the princess. I had never thought of the hero that way but it was 1962 and that was the concept of a leader: the guy who wants it the most and just takes over. And if he is the hero, his ability to complete the mission confirms he was right to do so, and we are to forgive any bad behavior it took for him to win. Like the death of the other 6 knights. If the villain tries to be a leader or achieve power, he fails, of course, and he pays for his bad behavior. So there was no real exploration of what actually makes one a good leader. The desire and drive seem sufficient, provided you succeed whatever the cost to others. Which makes it hard to tell a leader, or a hero for that matter, from a bully.

In a clergy Facebook page, a Lutheran pastor said he was approached by someone from a more conservative denomination who asked, “Do you think Jesus was just as much of a sissy when he was young as he was when he was older?” When the Lutheran pastor asked for clarification of the question, the person wondered if Jesus ever got into fights with other boys his age or did regular teenage things like carouse. Of course, the Bible doesn't mention anything of the sort but this guy seems to be of a stripe with the Evangelicals whose history is detailed in the book Jesus and John Wayne. Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez documents how they have conflated Christianity with toxic masculinity. So they have a lot of trouble with the whole “turn the other cheek,” “love your enemy” aspects of the faith. And this guy was probably hoping that Jesus had something in his past that made him more like John Wayne and less like what this guy sees as a hippie.

So what does this have to do with our lectionary? Today's readings are about injustice, and the solutions offered aren't about fighting bad guys but about sharing resources, showing respect for others and helping those at a disadvantage. In other words, they're about how you actually make things just. Because merely getting rid of bad people doesn't make the world run better, though you would never know that from most of our entertainment. We are supposed to assume that once the hero kills the main villain and blows up his lair/laboratory/spaceship that the world reverts to everything being just fine. That's like thinking that winning the American revolution was all that was necessary for the US to be a successful country. Actually it's the boring part of trying to work out a constitutional government and a justice system and then continually refining it and fixing mistakes that differentiates a functional nation from a dysfunctional one. And if you don't eliminate injustices and build in effective ways to correct them, another revolution is inevitable. As our passage from Proverbs says, “Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity.”

The problem is that the rich and powerful usually set these things up and they are not going to do it in a way that disadvantages them. In fact, they will usually give themselves extra advantages. For instance, in the original 13 states the South was at an electoral disadvantage. The white landowners were outnumbered by their slaves. They didn't want to give slaves the vote, but without counting them, the northern states would be able to control the federal government. So Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution says that for the purpose of electing members to the House of Representatives, a state's population was considered the number of free persons plus 3/5s the number of non-free people—excluding Native Americans entirely. And since the number of the electors a state sends to the Electoral College to choose the President is based on how many Senators and how many Representatives it had, the result was that 6 of the first 10 presidents were from the South, 5 of them from Virginia alone. Yet in the first census Virginia only had about 200 more free white men over the age of 16 than Pennsylvania but also nearly 290,000 more slaves and thus more electoral votes; 6 more to be precise. Advantage: slave states. For this injustice we reaped the calamity of the Civil War.

The Bible says over and over again that wealth does not convey nor indicate virtue. Because you can become rich by working hard and providing a needed product or service to people at a price they can afford. Or you can cheat, lie, con or even steal your way to wealth. Or just inherit it. At his death, Jeffrey Epstein was worth an estimated $577 million. And yet, nobody knows exactly how he got so rich. Was it through a Ponzi scheme, or money laundering, or did he blackmail rich and powerful people that he hooked up with underage women? No one thinks he did it by being the investment genius he claimed to be. (He only had one client.) Merely being wealthy says nothing about your character. How you got it and what you do with it shows who you really are.

Besides getting it honestly, what God cares about is that you use what you have to help those who are not so fortunate. What makes someone a hero in God's eyes is that he is selfless, not selfish. He helps the powerless, rather than taking advantage of them. As our passage from Proverbs says, “Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils the life of those who despoil them.” The city gate is mentioned because that's where the elders met and decided on legal matters. Those who mistreat the disadvantaged are not on the side of God. That includes those who allow injustice to continue. In contrast, God is both the advocate for the poor, the needy and the weak and the judge of those who harm them.

When I was in college, a pastor who had seen me in a play asked if I would help him at his Sunday service. I was to dress in shabby clothes, not shave or shower or wash my hair, and even use a little makeup to look more like a homeless guy. I was to walk into the middle of his service during the sermon. When I did so, the ushers frantically tried to stop me. I had to shake one off to continue down the center aisle as we had planned. Then the pastor addressed me, I said my lines and he made his point about how God's love and grace is extended to those who were different. I can't remember now, 50 years later, if he was preaching on today's passage from James but it would be appropriate.

Because James shockingly reveals that even in the early church there was discrimination. The rich were treated better than “a poor person in dirty clothes.” And then he goes on to list the sins of the rich. You have to realize that a century before this time, the Roman general Pompey had seized land from Jews and given it to wealthy Hellenized landowners. And the taxes Herod levied for his building projects also drove out small farmers. They either had to become hired hands or tenant farmers, paying rent for the land they worked and used to own. If they refused to pay rent they could either be replaced by slaves or be killed by squads of thugs the landowners employed. James and his audience saw firsthand the poor being exploited and oppressed.

In addition, Roman law favored the rich, who could afford to initiate lawsuits, which the poor were unlikely to win. Jewish courts tried to counter this in accordance with the Torah, which says, “You must not turn away justice for your poor people in their lawsuits.” (Exodus 23:6) But, then as now, folks who can afford to hire the most eloquent to make their defense tend to win.

That's why James condemns favoritism. The Greek word means being partial to someone on the basis of external considerations. And to see this in church just reinforced the unfairness of the inequality of wealth and opportunity people lived with every day. James even says, “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom he has promised to those who love him?” He is not saying that God has chosen only the poor but that God does pay special attention to them, as we saw in Proverbs, precisely because they are vulnerable and easily oppressed. And the poor, not having the resources the rich can rely on, tend to put their trust in God.

One big reason James gives for not showing favoritism is what he calls “the royal law,” namely “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Why does he call it the royal law? Because Jesus, our king, marked that out as the law of how people in the kingdom of God treated each other. If you favor some people over others because of external things like wealth, race, disability, nationality or something over which they have no control, you violate the law of love set down by our king. You are a lawbreaker. You might say, “Well, it's not like I killed someone.” No, but even our laws cover more than just murder. They cover everything from refusing to stop your boat when ordered to by law enforcement, to DUI with a suspended license, to forgery and fraud, to home invasion, to all degrees and manner of assaults. If convicted of any, you are a lawbreaker. James isn't letting people excuse the sin of favoritism just because there are more serious sins.

In talking about mercy, James makes an oblique reference to what his brother Jesus said: “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:7) He also seems to recall Jesus' parable about the slave who was shown mercy by his master for an enormous debt. But when that same slave refused to forgive another slave a smaller debt, the master says, “Evil slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?” And he is thrown into prison till he repays his debt. Jesus concludes, “So will my heavenly Father do to you, if each of you does not forgive your sibling from your heart.” (Matthew 18:23-35)

But, as we saw last week, that mercy means nothing if it just stays in your heart and doesn't manifest itself in your actions. Just like one's faith in God. As James says, “If your brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” Some people think that James is contradicting Paul's declaration, “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) But they forget that Paul goes right on to say, “For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.” (Ephesians 2:10, my emphasis) We are not saved by good works but for good works. Just like after my accident I wasn't saved by living a healthy life; I was saved by trusting a doctor to cut me open and fix me inside so that I could live a healthy life. That's why he did it, so I could get back to walking and taking care of myself. He didn't fix me up so I could just lie there and exist. In the same way, we trust that what Jesus did on the cross saves us, and not any good works we do. But Jesus saved us so we would be able to do the good works his Father created us to do.

Regarding this verse, Martin Luther says people are justified or declared righteous before God by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Real faith, genuine trust in God, always produces good works, and is accompanied by them. Love works the same way. If someone told you they loved their dog, but didn't feed them or give them water and left them out in all types of weather, both hot and freezing, you would have good reason to believe their “love” is all talk.

In faith and love, actions speak louder than words. As someone observed, when all is said and done there's a lot more said than done. We say we trust God but do we act like it? Do we act like people who believe God is in charge and will back us up when we do what is right even when it is not popular? Or do we let the world dictate what we do and back off when we run into opposition to what God clearly tells us to do? Do we act as if God is love and he wants us to love even people who seem unlovable? Or do we not want to forgive and love some people because it is really difficult? Do we act as if this life is not the only one and that any injuries not healed or any injustices not corrected in this life will be in the next? Or do play it safe and not take risks because we really think that living a life of self-sacrificial love as Jesus did is crazy?

If you really believe in a God of love and justice, it will come out in your life. If you don't, then you can just shrug your shoulders at injustices and do nothing about them. You can even add to them by grabbing whatever you can however you can. And you can try to convince yourself and others that you are really a hero rather than a jerk and a bully.

But if you believe that God intends our lives to be about more than just getting stuff and killing time till we die, if you believe that God calls us to follow Jesus and his example and to grow daily to become more like him, if you believe in the kingdom of God envisioned by Jesus, where there is justice and mercy and love and forgiveness, where the first are last and the last are first, where what we do to the disadvantaged in society will be counted as what we have done to Jesus, our king—well, then act like it!