Mr. Rogers had a famous quote: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ There are always helpers.”
Question for me…and for you.
Which describes us:
Do we ignore things?
Are we an obstacle?
Are we helping?
Jesus hated people whose words and actions were not integrated. These reveal hypocrisy. I’ve recently pondered some of the political leadership class who are going around preaching one message, yet their personal life is completely opposite.
We have seen far to many of the religious leadership class whose cup is burnished bright on the outside, yet the inside is coated with crud. (To paraphrase Jesus.)
Do not be like these. Strive to align your words and life with the teachings of Jesus around love.
As one rabbi said, after the commands to love God and love one another, all else is just commentary.
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What did school teach you?
Memorize the text and remember long enough to repeat on a test?
Granted, It is useful to our lives to have memorized many things. Sure, you can look them up in seconds on your smart phone. But, what if you’ve made the intelligent decision not to always have the smart phone?
To this day, I still have qualms about chemistry. A year of high school and a further year in college did not help. I kept asking why. They kept responding, just memorize the balance equation and repeat it on the test.
But I was curious about how it all worked.
What is your religion teaching you?
Memorize these verses in order to recall them to win an argument?
Jesus often responded with a question when approached by someone with a question. Maybe that means questions are good. He also complimented people for asking a question.
Some people are afraid of questions. Perhaps a question might shake their faith. I’ve recently come across an interesting thought—The opposite of faith is not doubt; it is certainty.
I don’t have faith in gravity. I’m certain that if I jump up then I will come down.
When Jesus says that he offers peace to us, I have faith I can receive that peace. But then I look around and question—there certainly doesn’t appear to be a lot of peace out there. What’s up, Jesus?
I’m curious. What did he mean? How do we receive it? What will it mean to us to ingest that peace?
It’s OK to question. It’s OK to seek that peace (or other things) Jesus offered with faith even though I may not be certain. That’s called life. Practices exist to help me find that peace. But circumstances exist that lead me to wonder if peace is possible.
I’m with the guy who was the most honest person in the New Testament, “I believe; help me in my unbelief!”
I will read, and question. I’ll continue to be curious. I don’t think curiosity really killed the cat. I don’t think it’ll kill be. I think we’re both stronger for it.
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Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?—Jesus
Researchers continue to observe effects on people from certain smart phone behaviors. The studies expanded following publication of Jonathon Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
Higher levels of doomscrolling were associated with significantly higher existential anxiety. In other words, the more you consume negative news, the more likely you are to feel uncertain about life’s meaning and your place in the world. We can’t say doomscrolling causes anxiety. It may be that anxious individuals are drawn to negative content. Either way, the relationship is strong enough to warrant attention.
There is a guy I talk with regularly at the fitness center. He’s Bob. He knows everyone. He’s Baptist, so most likely evangelical. I’m Methodist, so definitely Wesleyan. Similar, but different. Every fitness center I’ve used has TVs. They ask us not to turn it off. I mute it when I’m there. I was benchpressing dumbbells. He was on a machine. He looks up at the TV. “I hate those things. The news only serves to raise your negative emotions to make you feel bad.” I agreed. I have not watched TV news for 30 years with only a few exceptions (when visiting a friend).
We know what’s going on in the world. We don’t dwell on it. We follow Jesus’s teaching about worry and anxiety. They get us nowhere. They interfere with our life as Jesus-followers where we should be helping others.
Jesus didn’t say Follow me—to the sofa to watch TV news or doom scroll your smartphone. It was more like Follow me—and do as I have taught.
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I picked this up from Shane Parrish (FS) in Brain Food. I have probably hit each of these individually at some time. It’s interesting to see the list. Don’t scan it. It’s not a checklist.
Dwell on each item. Think. Where am I on these things? Where do I need to grow?
Superpowers you can choose:
Reviewing these once again before posting, I cringe at memories unearthed by a few. Those of you who know me know what I mean.
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I knew a teacher who would get to these wisdom pieces about not judging others, step aside from the text, and teach that we actually should judge other people.
He was partly wrong…and partly right. When we meet new people, we must evaluate. On the visceral level, do we like them, do we trust them, do we agree with them? This sort of evaluation helps us survive.
James, I think draws us deeper into these relationships.
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another.
Remember, he writes to these small groups of new followers of The Way. Think of your church or small group. As you gather, do you speak ill of someone not there—or even to their faces? That is counter to Law according to James. It’s also counter to the teachings of Jesus about love.
Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.
I interpret James to be observing that type of person who takes perverse pleasure about judging people guilty (or innocent) according to God’s Law. I bet that all of us know someone like that. Hopefully that person is not us.
There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
There is only one ultimate Judge. Why should we have the hubris so as to usurp God’s place?
This is an extension of James’s warning to be careful of what we say. We can start quite a firestorm with a comment. I know. I’ve done it in my life. It’s far better for everyone to hold our peace.
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Like I’ve said before, James does not soft-pedal his message.
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
John Climacus, one of the more influential Desert Fathers, also spoke boldly.
Pride is the denial of God, an invention of the devil, contempt for men. It is the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of barrenness. It is a flight from God’s help, the harbinger of madness, the author of downfall. It is the cause of diabolical possession, the source of anger, the gateway of hypocrisy. It is the fortress of demons, the custodian of sins, the source of hardheartedness. It is the denial of compassion, a bitter pharisee, a cruel judge. It is the foe of God. It is the root of blasphemy.
Whew!
Stories in our news feeds would shrivel like a dried worm on the street on a sunny day following a rainstorm without prideful people to describe.
More important than observing others, let us turn the microscope on ourselves. Where does pride sneak past our defenses showing up in most unfortunate ways? Avoiding pride requires ever present vigilance. We let our guard down for even a moment, and pride can slither into our being.
Where should we focus to avoid the power of pride? James says:
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
I hope he doesn’t mean to constantly walk around in gloom. But when we recognize pride growing in ourselves, time for optimism and laughter is over. In its place enters a dose of humility and turning to God’s grace to restore our souls.
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Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.
It’s like that song I quoted a few days ago, Love is something you do when Jesus Christ is living in you.
People, including people known as theologians, try to make the simple complicated. I love how James boils things down to the essentials. We don’t need checklists, scorecards, complex psychological formulae. We know who is wise among us. We see it. We sense it. And I love how he adds the ingredient humility into the recipe. Even though that pokes at me.
But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
Incessant media coverage infuses our consciousness with stories of Silicon Valley billionaires and miscellaneous politicians whose public persona can best be described with James’s observation about the other kind of wisdom. We may not be as direct as James, but we see that, too. Envy, selfish, ambition. Perhaps these have seduced most of us—large scale or local. It’s so easy to get sucked into the vacuum. It’s worth the pause to reflect on when we may have been so seduced and what we’ve done to push it away.
But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
These sound much like the fruit of the spirit of which Paul writes elsewhere. Think about the kind of life we would have living like that. Think of the people you meet—wouldn’t you love for them all to exhibit those characteristics?
It’s long after New Year’s Resolution time. But better than resolutions is to picture oneself living that kind of life. Who are you? I’m the sort of person who is peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
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A small text document sits always at the top left of my computer screen. It shows me a blessing written by the Irish poet John O’Donohue.
May I live this day compassionate of heart…
Our pastor had a sort of lottery bowl at the front Sunday. It contained cards for us to draw at random. Referring to the star that guided the Magi, these were to be our “Star Words” for the year.
I drew Compassion.
I try to keep a clean desk (Even though Albert Einstein supposedly quipped, “If a messy desk is the sign of a disordered mind, of what is an empty desk a sign?”). I have placed the card on the desk lamp as a reminder for the year.
When someone does something foolish (even me) or stupid or even evil, it’s a reminder that there is some part of that someone in need of compassion. Perhaps even my small thought of compassion reflects on me as a reminder to also hold some compassion for my stupidity.
When an interview turned somewhat political and the interviewer asked executive coach Jerry Colonna how he could be compassionate toward the personality of Donald Trump, he replied, “I see an injured little boy trying to live up to his dad’s expectations, and I feel compassion.”
Where can we look beneath the surface and offer compassion today? And tomorrow?
(Yes, I digress from exploring the letter of James—but I think he’d approve.)
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One media theme I’ve observed for decades that continues to generate smoke concerns acts by individual people.
You’ve seen it. You may have participated on social media. You may have been influenced. This is not an American thing. It’s a people thing.
One person does something—good or bad, but usually bad. People in media immediately extrapolate from the one to the many. Instead of this individual doing something, the reports make it seem that all people like that person are the same—gender, nationality, race, religion, age.
If you got caught doing something—bad or good—how representative would that be of people like you? Maybe you wish that it would reflect well on people like you.
Maybe 2026 will be the year where we truly represent what it means to be a Jesus-follower. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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Gary Mintchell
Faith Venture 