Muddy

 No one stays clean rolling around in mud. Once you start, you know how it’s going to end, and there’s no amount of insisting that you didn’t. Even if you win, you lose because if you manage to make the other person cry uncle, you’re covered in grime, and no matter how well you try to hide it, people will still know where you’ve been.

Some people like it. They go looking for it, hoping they can say something to get your goad and make you jump into the pit with them, and I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that in my younger years; that would have been my reaction. I rarely jumped in, but boy, did I want to. It wasn’t so much an issue of pride; it was the knowledge that I could win. I had the better argument, the more aggressive intellect, and the faster response time to any trite ad hominem attack they could muster. On more than one occasion, I had to remind myself that even if I won, I wasn’t winning anything.

The older I got, the more I realized it wasn’t worth the time it took to clean off the mud, so I avoided jumping in, and it has served me well. The only time I will get into a war of words, the only time I will come out swinging, is when someone claims I spoke things I never did or made declarations that never crossed my lips. If you have to put words in someone’s mouth to make them seem ignoble, then you’ve already failed at your mission.

James wasn’t trying to pick a fight. He wasn’t trying to get into the mud, but he felt compelled to rip the lid off this particular can of worms and see what lay beneath. Sometimes, people need a mirror placed before them in order to see the reality of what’s really there. Even then, some refuse to believe their own eyes, insisting it’s a trick of the light or one of those carnival mirrors that make them appear more hideous than they are in real life. The mirror isn’t warped; mirrors don’t lie, and neither does the Word, so man’s insistence that the reason he does not have all that God has for him is somehow God’s fault is foolish and misguided.

This was not a rebuke to one individual; this was a rebuke to the entire body. The body, being made up of members, and the members unconcerned about the body's wellbeing but rather obsessed with their individual desires, had caused those to whom James was writing to be divided, at odds, generally contentious, and at each other’s throats. They were experiencing the spiritual version of an autoimmune disorder where the body attacks itself or at the least a spiritual version of Raynaud’s disease where enough blood isn’t pumping to the extremities, and they no longer function properly.

Hence, the paramount importance of the head of a body being Christ, not some man or denomination. If Christ is the head of the body, then the body will function optimally, doing what it has been commanded to do by the head. If, however, Christ is just a foil, someone to name once in a great while when you’re trying to get people to focus on the next round of funds needed for the new building, His commands will never be obeyed, and His direction will never be followed.

Those who saw the shift happening in real-time tried to warn of the consequences, but we were shushed, silenced, and waved off by those eager to have the best of both worlds. Righteousness was too constricting. Holiness was an antiquated term. We needed something fresh, something new, something with a zest that would allow men to slip on their party shoes six days per week, sit in a pew for forty-five minutes or less that other day, and be guaranteed a seat on the next heaven-bound bus.

It drew the crowds. Boy, did it ever. It was like going to a 90% off sale for stuff you really wanted but couldn’t bring yourself to pay up for. That was the initial lie that birthed all the others: if you wait long enough, salvation and eternity will be heavily discounted at some point.

All it took was for the first guy to put the blood of Jesus on sale, to discount it while discounting the Scriptures, and all the others had to fall in line and follow suit. They had employees to pay and sanctuaries to expand, too.

That’s the problem with myopia; no one ever thinks it through, and no one considers what the ramifications of their current actions will be five, ten, or twenty years down the road, as long as they get theirs today.

Once you start down the road of diluting the Word, once you begin to make compromises, be sure that someone somewhere will be willing to go further than you, compromise more than you, then the ball will once more be in your court, and you will have to do likewise to stay relevant.

It’s a race to the bottom, and each new allowance, each new compromise, each new betrayal of the truth only serves to harm the body, leech its power, and draw it further away from the truth and the light.

This is why the Bible never offers the option for retreat. You stand, having done all to stand, but you do not compromise the truth for the sake of temporary relief. One compromise will lead to another. It’s as inevitable as night following day. It’s also something we’ve seen too much of in the modern-day church, and the results of this speak for themselves.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.