Clarity

As any newlywed couple is wont to do, the first few months of our marriage, my wife and I got to know each other’s pet peeves, quirks, and idiosyncrasies, some not worth mentioning, others needing to get hammered out before they became an issue. There is an adjustment period for two becoming one, and to avoid bitterness, resentment, or acrimony later down the line, a husband and wife must communicate openly with each other.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone is not clear on what they want, expect, or desire of me, whether it’s taking out the trash, making breakfast, or picking up groceries. Communication is vital to a successful marriage, and that was one of the first things we learned to do almost a quarter of a century ago, and it has paid dividends ever since. Be clear, concise, and direct about what you want. It makes everything else going forward much easier.

If I go to a restaurant and order a meal and don’t specify that I don’t want grilled onions on my steak or that I think blue cheese is too pungent and it ruins a fine piece of beef, if it gets delivered with the onions and the blue cheese, I have no one to blame but myself. Some people will send it back and say they didn’t want onions or cheese on their steak, but my wife worked in the food service industry when we first moved to America, and I’m not even going to tell you what they do to food that gets sent back to the kitchen for a fabricated reason. On second thought, nothing happens. Keep sending the food back because the mashed potatoes had too much butter. I’m not about to give away trade secrets, but if the mistake was yours, or there’s nothing wrong with what you ordered except esthetics, it’s just one meal out of a lifetime’s worth of meals. You’ll be fine if you eat it, I promise.

In order to ask for what you want, you must know what you want, and in order to receive what you want, you must specify, and explicitly so, down to the minutest of details if need be. Also, once you know what you want, it cannot be incongruent with your environment. You don’t walk into an Indian restaurant and demand a steak or a vegan restaurant and demand a cheeseburger. By the by, it’s not as though it’s not goofy enough on its face to venerate any sort of animal, but of all the animals one can choose to venerate they pick the cow? Really? The cow?

Back in the day, there used to be an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet near the ministry office. Whenever my dad would visit, and I’d ask where he wanted to eat, he’d always say the buffet, but every time, he ended up getting spaghetti and nothing else. No, I don’t mean the chow mein or the lo mein; I mean literal spaghetti from the kids' section, and he’d sprinkle some tomato sauce on it.

On more than one occasion, I offered to take him somewhere else. Perhaps the fine Italian cuisine the Olive Garden had to offer would be better suited for what he was hungry for, but each time, he’d choose the Chinese buffet and each time, it was the spaghetti. To this day, I don’t understand it, but he’s my dad, and I love him, so I obliged.

As we continue our journey through James, he is intent on making sure people understand that in order to receive from God, you must be clear on what you want and in the right place to receive it.

James 4:1-3, “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

Before we get into the text itself, I would like to dispel a myth that could be dangerous to the spiritual well-being of believers in general: the notion that shepherds must always treat the sheep with kid gloves.

I’ve been told I can’t be a preacher because I’m not nice enough, and that was just from reading a Bible passage verbatim. I’m not saying anyone should go out of their way to be caustic or mean-spirited, but sometimes the truth must be told without considering feelings. Sometimes, the truth must be spoken, and it will likely land like a hammer blow than the tickle of a feather.

I don’t know how many people James had to counsel before he wrote this portion of his Epistle, but if you think he’s being mean or unkind now, wait until the following few verses.

Most people today live with the expectation of being coddled, even though we’ve seen in real-time how dangerous coddling people who should be confronted can be. Those who demand to be coddled, accepted, and validated in whatever condition they find themselves in never self-correct because the environment they’ve created for themselves never calls them to repentance.

Somewhere deep down, they know they are in sin, but they’ve found for themselves teachers would not point out the fallacy of the argument that you can live like hell all the days of your life and still be welcomed into heaven for no other reason than because you say it’s not a sin. The Bible does, and it’s the Bible you will have to contend with on that day.

James isn’t talking out of the side of his mouth; he’s not shooting in the dark hoping to hit; he’s coming with receipts and laying out not only what was happening among the Jews of his day but also the source of where all the contention, strife, and animus was coming from.

This chapter begins where James left off previously, discussing that a bad tree cannot produce good fruit, and a good tree cannot produce bad fruit. He defined what godly wisdom and earthly wisdom were and insisted that godly wisdom is to be preferred over worldly wisdom, for while earthly wisdom is fleeting, godly wisdom is ever true. Having done that, he is beginning to dig deeper to the root of the problem, exposing the things everyone’s pretending aren’t there because if they were to acknowledge their true spiritual condition, they would either have to recognize that they are far from God and need to return to Him or admit that they love their sin more than they love God.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.