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Some of you have heard the news that a local school board in Charlotte, North Carolina voted to eliminate the naming of valedictorians. The following appeared on FoxNews.com:

Citing what it calls “unhealthy” competition among students, the Wake County school board is the latest in the country to make valedictorians and salutatorians a thing of the past, The News & Observer of Charlotte reports. … [S]chool officials say singling out two people for their grade point averages just encourages students to take easy classes and to not help their classmates study.

It seems unlikely to me that there would be a lot of “competition” for just two slots. I think it’s more likely that 99% of the students would never even think they stood a chance and so would not engage in the competition described. Why work so hard for something that you’re not likely to get?

I graduated at the top of my class in Seminary and received a cash award (not a large one, I promise you) but it wasn’t as if I postured or took easy classes to get it. In fact, it never occurred to me that I would get a prize; I just studied hard because I enjoyed learning the faith.

Thus something tells me that the “explanation” offered by the school board is not the real reason. To quote an old Nat King Cole song, “Your story’s so touching, but it sounds just like a lie.”

Pardon me if I suspect old fashioned envy at work here. There are some who despise the fact that others excel because it makes them look worse by comparison. But such an attitude is classic envy: sorrow or sadness at the excellence of someone else because I take it to lessen my own.

Excellence is a beautiful thing, something to esteem and hold up before all. I would argue that it is yet another sign of the decline of our culture that we can’t seem to “tolerate” the celebration of excellence and achievement. Why is this? One reason is the tyranny of relativism. Another is obsessive, excessive concern for the feelings of others. But a more fundamental answer lies in the cardinal or deadly sin of envy.

What is envy? Most people today use the word as a synonym for jealousy. But traditionally, jealousy is not the same as envy.

When I am jealous of you, I want something that you have and wish to possess it, inordinately so. But the key point is that there is something good about you or something good you possess, which I want to have for myself.

In traditional theology, envy is quite different (cf. Summa Theologica, III IIae 36.1). Envy is sorrow, sadness, or anger at the goodness or excellence of someone else, because I take it to lessen my own. The key difference with envy is that (unlike with jealousy) I do not want to possess the good or excellence you have; rather, I want to destroy it.

Envy is diabolical – St. Augustine called envy the diabolical sin (De catechizandis rudibus 4,8:PL 40,315-316), because it seeks to minimize, end, or destroy what is good. Scripture says, By the envy of the Devil death entered the world (Wis 2:24). Seeing the excellence that Adam and Eve (made in the image of God) possessed, and possibly knowing of plans for the incarnation, the Devil envied Adam and Eve. Their glory lessened his, or so he thought, and he set out to destroy the goodness in them. Yes, envy is very ugly; it is diabolical.

The effect of the Wake County school board’s decision is to further suppress the praise of excellence. Excellence should be praised both for the gift that it is to the whole community as well as for the way it acts to encourage excellence in others! Decisions like this further minimize esteem for excellence and mute the encouragement of it.

Some will argue that academic excellence is but one sort of excellence. Is there not artistic excellence, emotional intelligence, and so forth? Certainly. Then find ways to honor those sorts of excellence as well. I paraded around my high school for three years sporting a “letter jacket” that broadcast my athletic excellence as part of the track and field team. The band issued “letter sweaters” to their best students.

Excellence is a blessing. I’m sorry if this implies that some are less excellent, but life is like that. Some people excel, some are also-rans, and some are even poor at certain things. (I never made the cut to become part of the math club but somehow I survived the blow to my ego.)

Count me among those who see the elimination of honors as another sign of an ailing culture. If we cannot honor excellence and achievement we have tipped our hat to what a great saint and learned man, St. Augustine, called a diabolical sin.

Is it too strong for me to say that Satan must be having a good laugh? When we are embarrassed or alarmed by excellence and even call it “unhealthy,” I can hear Satan gleefully crowing, “My perversion of them is almost complete. They are ashamed of their glory and they glory in their shame.”

In my over 26 years as a priest (even longer serving in some capacity at the Holy Liturgy) I have witnessed more than a few people faint. Some just slump over; others go out with a real bang. Weddings are a big source of fainting spells, but just about any long Mass produces its share of “lights out” experiences. Some years ago, when I was serving as First Assistant Deacon for a Pontifical Solemn High Mass in the Basilica, we predicted prior to the Mass that at least one person would pass out. It’s usually one of the torch bearers because they have to kneel on the marble for so long. Sure enough, right at Communion time, one of them went down, torch and all. It seems that such a Mass wouldn’t be complete if at least one person didn’t pass out!

In the warmer weather fainting spells are more common. Further, the height of wedding season is approaching. It might not be bad to ponder the topic of fainting.

OK, so what’s going on here? Are people overwhelmed by the presence of God and then they just “rest in the Spirit?” Well, that’s a fine and holy thought; perhaps I should just stop the article here! However, there are probably other explanations.

1. Dehydration – The heat in some churches can cause dehydration. Dehydration lowers blood volume, which causes blood pressure to drop and makes it harder to get the blood to the brain. And then out you go!
2. Anemia – Some women are borderline anemic, especially at certain times of their monthly cycle. This reduces the number of red blood and thus lowers the ability of the blood to deliver oxygen to the brain. And then out you go!
3. Stress – In order to maintain appropriate blood pressure, there must be a proper balance between two chemicals: adrenaline and acetylcholine. Adrenaline stimulates the body, including making the heart beat faster and making the blood vessels narrower, thereby increasing blood pressure. Acetylcholine does the opposite. Fainting can happen when something stimulates the vagus nerve and causes too much acetylcholine to be produced at the wrong time. Pain can do this; so can “situational stress” such as seeing blood or just the prolonged stress that often occurs at funerals and weddings. Such things cause too much acetylcholine, which slows the heart, dilates the blood vessels, and decreases blood pressure. Because of this, not enough blood reaches the brain. And then out you go!
4. Prolonged standing or kneeling – This can also cause the blood to collect in the lower legs. The movement of the blood back from the limbs is assisted by the movement of those limbs. I was always taught never to lock my knees when standing because this slows blood flow and makes blood accumulate in the legs. It is important when standing to bend your knees slightly in order to allow for some movement of the legs by shifting your weight. This improves circulation and keeps blood pressure at a proper level. If you don’t do that, then standing for long periods of time can result in more blood in the legs and less going to the brain.  And then out you go!
5. Low blood sugar – In some cases, this can cause a person to faint. The brain requires blood flow in order to provide oxygen and glucose to its cells. Excessively low blood sugar can cause one to feel drowsy and weak, and in some cases to faint, especially if some of the other factors are present. Hence, if you have been fasting (rare today!) before Communion and also have a tendency to be hypoglycemic … out you go!

There are surely other causes of fainting (some of them very serious (though rare)), but let this list suffice. It would seem that Masses and other church services are overrepresented in the fainting department, due to any combination of the above factors.

It is surely a strange experience to faint. I have done so a number of times in the past, due to an asthmatic cough that I used to get. During an extreme coughing episode, the rhythm of the heart is disturbed, blood pressure drops, and then out you go. When I faint, everything seems to fade to black; the lights just go out. Sometimes I can even feel myself falling but can do little about it. I just hope I fall gracefully! I usually come to a moment or so later but it is a strange experience to say the least. The brain can only go without blood (oxygen) for a few seconds before unconsciousness ensues, and then out you go!

We are wonderfully, fearfully made, to be sure. And yet we are earthen vessels, fragile and in need of delicate balance. We are contingent beings, dependent upon God for every beat of our heart and every function of every cell in our body. Maybe fainting in Church isn’t so bad after all because it helps keep us humble—and that is always a good “posture” before God. Before the immensity of God, it is good to be reminded of our fragility and our dependence upon Him for all things, even the most hidden processes of our body.

Enjoy this video compilation of people fainting (many of them occurring in Church) and consider well that “To be absent from the body is to be present to God” (2 Cor 5:8).

There is an old saying that the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. Indeed, it’s pretty hard to hate or even to have a strong aversion to something or someone we don’t really care about. But when we do love, we care. And the stronger our love, the more intense our concern, anger, or even hatred for what is wrong.

But does this mean that love is the cause of hatred? Our instinct is to recoil and say, “Of course not!”

As usual, St. Thomas provides help in sorting out some of the details and making proper distinctions. He takes up the question in the Prima Secundae (question 29 and Article 2): “Is Love the Cause of Hatred?”

Love … precedes hatred; and nothing is hated, except through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love (Summa Theologica, I IIae 29.2, respondeo).

In other words, St. Thomas is saying that we would not hate that which is wrong, deformed, unjust, or dissonant unless we first loved what it was supposed to be. And thus love precedes hatred. It causes hatred by first instilling the love for what is right and then engendering a detestation of what is wrong.

An important distinction – If the word “hate” is tripping you up, understand that “hate” as used here is not referring to a vengeful wrath that seeks to destroy others. That sort of hate is, of course, forbidden; it flows not from wanting the good, true, and beautiful for others, but from a desire to destroy them. This is diabolical hatred: a hatred that hates, not the sin, but the sinner.

The hate referenced here is more akin to grief, or to the sorrow and anger we feel when someone or something is not as it should be. It is grief and a passion to set things right. This is the sort of hatred that love causes.

St. Thomas adds in his reply to objection 2:

Love and hatred are contraries … [and so] it amounts to the same that one love a certain thing, or that one hate its contrary. Thus love of one thing is the cause of one’s hating its contrary (I IIae 29.2, ad 2).

If we don’t love, we don’t care. But when we love, we care, and we experience indignation when what we care about is deformed, cast aside, or contrary to what it should be. And in this way loves causes hatred.

Love wills the good of the other, for his or her own sake. Love does not will the good of the other in order to win an argument or to be proved right. It wills the good simply for the sake of the other. St. Thomas says that love hates what is contrary to what is suitable and proper. But since no person, human or angelic, is in himself contrary to what is proper, we do not hate the person but rather what is deformed or contrary to what it should be. Therefore, a human (or angelic) person can never be the object of our hatred, per se.

One might object that correlation is not causation, and that is true, but in this case the hatred would not exist at all were the thing not first loved in its ideal form. It is this love of the ideal that causes the hatred of what is deformed. Thus love is the cause of the hatred, not merely correlated to it.

Why is this important for us to grasp? There are many reasons, but of special importance is understanding it in relation to one another.

In modern times, we have tended to reduce love to kindness, warm feelings, affirmation, and approval. But this is a drastic reduction of love. Kindness is an aspect of love, but so is rebuke. Approval and affirmation have their place, but so do forbiddance and insistence on what is right. Love can produce warm feelings but it can also bring about the deepest indignation.

When we love others we want for them what is good, true, just, proper, and beautiful—not what is deformed. And given the fact that we live in a fallen world, governed by a fallen angel, and are ourselves fallen and prone to sin, true love for others will have tensions. But tension is not always bad. No tension, no change. And change is going to be necessary for us to reach the perfection to which we are called.

So true love, properly understood, is capable of great indignation—yes, even of hatred. We ought to hate anything that is deformed or that is less than that to which we are called. Scripture says that if we love the world (a lesser thing) then we are enemies of God—yes, even adulterers! For God is our true love; anything less than loving God above all else is to be hated. Jesus gets even more personal when he says, If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—such a person cannot be my disciple (Lk 14:26). Jesus is insisting on the same truth: that He is to be loved above all. Any lesser love that takes His place is a hateful and harmful thing.

Such strong language! And we in these dainty times wince at it. But vigorous love causes a hatred of deformity and a jealousy for the fullness of what love should be. Much of our problem today is that we do not hate our sins or those of others nearly enough. From this perspective, our modern notion of kind, tolerant “love” is really slothful, weak love that seeks what makes everyone feel good rather than what is best. Feeling good becomes more important that doing good or being good. The ancient motto esse quam videri (to be rather than to seem (to be)) is reversed and it becomes more important to seem to be than it is to actually be.

Thus our modern notion of love is weak at best and a lie at worst. St. Thomas’ teaching that love is the cause of hatred indicates that our lack of hate for sin and other deformities of what is good, true, and beautiful is caused by a lack of love. It is not a display of open-mindedness or tolerance; it is a lack of love.

True love admits of jealousy, indignation, and hatred for what is deformed, deficient, untrue, or obtuse. True love is fiery; it has a passion to set things right and to insist on what is truly good rather than what is merely adequate.

How deep is your love? Is it capable of being the cause of hatred? It ought to be (if properly understood).

Does this sort of talk unnerve you? Let me finish by simply requoting St. Thomas:

Love … precedes hatred; and nothing is hated, except through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love.

The video below is a bit over the top, but it still communicates a basic point that is too often absent today: a father ought to protect his daughter’s honor. I was a teen in the late 1970s, and though it was towards the end of an era, most of us young men still knew that any young lady we dated had a father to whom we were answerable for our actions. We knew that we were expected to return her to her home at a reasonable hour and that we were going to be held accountable for any transgressions, sexual or otherwise.

Frankly, it helped to remember that this young lady was someone’s daughter. And while the system wasn’t perfect, it was helpful. Accountability is always helpful.

Much has changed today. Fathers are often absent, or if not absent, at least more passive than in the past. Further, young people today marry later in life, when the influence of a father may well have decreased.

I offer simply this observation: parents (and other adults) no longer do so well by their teens and twenty-somethings. We used to offer dances so that they could meet. We used chaperone the younger ones so that imprudence did not destroy them. Yes, we used to act like parents/adults. Too often today there is little involvement either in helping young people to meet good candidates for marriage or in protecting them from their all-too-new passions, over which they need to develop mastery.

It’s time to recover the pivotal role of parents, to which this video points, even if in a comical way.

 

Words, while an important part of our toolset, can also get in the way of reality. But how can we live without them? On some level we must allow a deep level of language to help us in sorting out reality; words are something that help us to form a mental picture. In particular, we sometimes turn to metaphors and extended metaphors (parables, allegories, stories, etc.).

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which two different things are equated for rhetorical effect. It can be used to provide clarity to something unfamiliar by comparing it to something familiar, or to point out hidden similarities between two unlike things. The word comes from the Greek metapherein (meta (beyond) + pherein (to bear or carry)) meaning “to transfer,” or, more literally, “to carry something beyond.”

A metaphor often seeks to capture something deeper by comparing it to something that is more easily grasped. In the metaphor “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare takes a deep concept (the world (or life)) and frames it in the context of something more manageable (a stage). This is not to say that a stage is precisely the equivalent of the world, but rather to capture some truth about the world and highlight it for understanding.

Similarly, stories can be used to communicate what is complex or to some degree inexpressible, by relating memorable experiences that disclose truth. Good stories often convey many complex truths at once. The best stories use surprise, irony, conflict, or some combination thereof to convey truth and wisdom in a memorable way.

Stories and metaphors can expose a unity between seemingly unlike things that exists beneath the surface level. On these deeper levels, things often shift, surprise, and even amuse us. Not everything in life is as it first appears; God does not easily fit into a convenient little box. Stories and metaphors can open windows onto wider vistas and expose deeper mysteries.

With this background in mind, consider the following stories. There is a wide collection of such stories from both the Rabbinic tradition and the Desert Fathers. The saints, too, have supplied us with many. The following selections are somewhat random as I drew them from various sources. Many of them were taken from The Spirituality of Imperfection: Story Telling and the Search for Meaning. They are a rich stories of the magnificent and mysterious reality called life.

In each case, the “story” is presented in bold, black italics. I have limited myself to very brief comments, shown in plain, red text.

When the disciples of the Rabbi Baal Shem Tov asked him how to know whether a celebrated scholar whom they proposed to visit was a true wise man he answered, “Ask him to advise you what to do to keep unholy thoughts from disturbing you in your prayers and studies. If he gives you advice, then you will know that he belongs to those who are of no account.”

Not all things have a solution. God sometimes allows things to happen in order test us and He asks us to live with difficulties. If there really were a solution to the problem of distraction and temptation, spiritual teachers would long ago have provided it. Therefore, those who claim some insight into this common human problem are of little account.

2. When the Rabbi Bunam was asked why the first of the Ten Commandments speaks of God bringing us out of the land of Egypt, rather than of God creating heaven and earth, the Rabbi expounded, “‘Heaven and earth!’ Then man might have said, ‘Heaven—that is too much for me.’ So God said to man, ‘Look, I am the one who fished you out of the mud. Now come over here and listen to me!’”

We often relate first to earthly things and then to higher spiritual matters.

3. A woman sought out a confessor of long experience. In her confession she recounted the behaviors that troubled her. She then began to detail how these behaviors seemed somehow connected with her experience of having grown up in an alcoholic home. At that point the grizzled veteran confessor reached out and, gently patting her hand, asked: “My dear do you want forgiveness or an explanation?”

Some people confuse confession and spirituality with therapy. Therapy offers explanations; confession seeks mercy and forgiveness.

4. Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends everything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees (St. Gregory of Nyssa).

Too often our certitude is rooted not in God or in true faith but in our own thoughts. Our thoughts can become idols and we can become ideologues. Wonder is able to bring us to our knees in humility and gratitude. Wonder opens us to all that God has done. Blind adherence to ideology can close us in on ourselves and our own limited thoughts.

5. The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for his supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus to Diogenes, “If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils.” Said Diogenes in reply, “Learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to be subservient to the king.”

This is analogous to our serving of this world and our consequent slavery to it.

6. A man of piety complained to Baal Shem Tov, saying, “I have labored hard and long in the service of the Lord, and yet I am little improved. I’m still an ordinary, ignorant person.” The rabbi answered, “You have gained the realization that you are ordinary and ignorant, and this in itself is a worthy accomplishment.”

Humility, reverence for the truth about ourselves, is the door.

7. One day some disciples of Abba Besarian ceased talking in embarrassment when he entered the house of study. He asked them what they were talking about. They said, “We were saying how afraid we are that the evil urge will pursue us.” “Don’t worry,” he replied, “You have not gotten high enough for it to pursue you. For the time being you are still pursuing it.”

Too often we determine the cause of our problems to be the devil, when, more truly, it is our own flesh.

8. The priest put this question to a class of children: “If all the good people in the world were red, and all the bad people were green, what color would you be?” A young girl thought hard for a moment, then her face brightened, and she replied, “I’d be streaky!”

We are all a mixed bag, neither wholly good, nor wholly bad. The journey from evil to good is not yet complete. God alone is wholly good.

9. For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven; it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy (St. Therese of Lisieux).

Too often we make of prayer a complicated thing.

Please feel free to add your own insights. I hope to post more of these in the near future.

Here is a collection of sayings, most of which ring true to me, set to music:

This post is a kind of follow-up to yesterday’s reflection from the Letter of James, in which we were summoned away from our double-minded ways.

One of the beatitudes taught by Jesus is often misunderstood, largely due to the popular translations of it from the Greek text: “Blessed are the pure of heart,” or “Blessed are the clean of heart.” Let’s look at three facets of the beatitude: its fundamental meaning, its focus, and the freedom it gives.

I. Fundamental Meaning – While the words “pure” and “clean” are not inauthentic translations of the Greek word καθαρός (katharos), a more literal translation is “to be without admixture, to be simply one thing.” Hence it means to be that one thing, purely and simply, with nothing else mixed in. Another helpful way of translating the Greek μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ (makarioi hoi katharoi te kardia) is “Blessed are the single-hearted.”

The reason I suggest that the phrase “single-hearted” is more descriptive is that in modern English the words “pure” and “clean” tend to evoke a moral sense of being free of sin, of being morally upright. And while this is surely a significant part, being single-hearted is a deeper and richer concept than simply being well-behaved, because to be well-behaved is the result of the deeper truth of being one thing, of not being duplicitous, of not having a divided heart.

II. Focus – Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange says, Simplicity is opposed not only to duplicity, but to every useless complexity, to all that is pretentious or tainted with affectation … Christ says to us “If thy eye be single thy whole body shall be lightsome” (Mat 6:22); that is, if our intention is upright and simple, our whole life be one, true and luminous, instead of being divided, like that of those who try to serve two masters … The perfect soul is thus a simplified soul … willing things only for God (Three Ages of the Interior Life, Tan Publishers, Vol 2, pp. 162-163).

The image of the rose window in my church (see upper right), which I have used before on this blog, is a good illustration of what it means to be single-hearted. It does not deny that life has different facets, but rather shows that every facet of life is ordered around and points to Christ, is subsumed in Jesus and His heavenly kingdom along with the Father and the Spirit as the ordering principle of every other thing. And thus career, family, marriage, finances, spending priorities, use of time, where one lives, and all other imaginable aspects of life are subsumed in Christ, point to Him, and lead to the Lord and His kingdom on high.

So the single-hearted life is a well-ordered life. Each step, each decision leads in the right direction. St. Paul said, This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14). While Paul made many journeys to many places, he was really on one journey and headed to one place. This simplified and ordered his life. He was single-hearted.

A simple life is a well-ordered, singly focused life. But duplicity introduces many complexities and disorders. Jesus says, He who does not gather with me, scatters (Luke 11:23). Unfortunately, this image of scattering or being hindered describes many Christians whose lives are not ordered on the one thing necessary, who are not single-hearted, whose hearts are not focused on the one thing they should be. Such people have lives that are often scattered, confused, disordered, and filled with a jumble of conflicting drives that hinder them from the true goal of life. The double minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8).

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that simplicity is related to the virtue of veracity, because it opposes the duplicity that James denounced (Summa Theologica IIa IIae q. 109 art. 2, the 4^th). 

III. Freedom – Finally, being single-hearted, being pure of heart, not only orders our life but it also grants us freedom. In modern Western thinking, freedom is often equated with doing more rather than less. Freedom is interpreted as “being able to do anything I please.” This attitude has led to the kind of jumbled mess that much of modern life has become: a tangled web of contrary desires with little unifying direction or purpose. We tend to think of freedom in abstract terms and hence we tend to get abstract and disconnected results. 

But biblically and spiritually, freedom is the capacity or ability to do what is right, best, and proper. And thus, paradoxically, freedom often means doing less, not more.

Being single-hearted helps to focus us and to pare away a lot of the unnecessary baggage of modern life. Life gets simpler, and simplicity is a form of freedom that allows us to focus on what is important more so than on what is urgent. We discover that what often seems to be urgent is not really so necessary or urgent after all. Regarding the good options in life, St. Paul said, All things are lawful to me, but not all things are expedient (1 Cor 6:12).

Pray for the gift to become more single-hearted. More than ever in this modern age, with its myriad distractions and endless possibilities, we need to learn the lesson of the rose window and center our lives on Christ, the one thing necessary.

I have used the video below in other posts. Please pardon a brief profane word in the clip, but it does help to emphasize the point being made.

There is a reading in daily Mass this week (Tuesday of the 7^th Week of the year) in which James masterfully sets forth a fundamental aspect of our struggle against sin. He speaks of our disordered passions and double-minded ways. He assesses our problems and then offers solutions. The text from the Letter of James (James 4:1-10) is presented below in bold italics, while my commentary is shown in normal font.

I. Source – Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war.

The text states simply that our problems center on our disordered passions. Notice that it is not the passions per se, but disordered passions, the passions that “wage war” within us.

Of themselves, the passions are good. Without hunger we would forget to eat or find it to be too much effort. Without anger, we would care little for justice and no longer pursue it. Without curiosity (a kind of intellectual passion) we would never ask or solve.

So the problem is the disordered passions, the passions that wage war and summon us to foolish pursuits and conquests. In the moment, our passions are over the top. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing (Eccl 1:8).

The text says that we covet but do not possess. Why? Because acquiring, our desire expands and we still feel empty! The promise that one can “have it all” rings hollow, because the meaning of “all” is ever expanding. It is like the mirage of water in the desert: always just ahead, always inviting us, yet never there!

And thus, as the text says, we rage. We acquire unjustly. We conquer, kill, and seize if necessary. But we will have what is “ours,” what we think we need, and even what we merely want. Collectively, we will sacrifice anything in order to acquire: family, children, health, sleep, you name it. We’ll do anything just to have a little more of something we can’t even really enjoy because we have to work so hard to get it. And then when we get it, we need something else.

When do we ever say, “It’s enough”? Greed drives many conflicts, within and without.

II. Supply – You have not because you ask not.

God will give us what we need; He will not necessarily give us what we want. But in the end, an essential solution to our deadly greed is to ask God for what we need and be grateful for what we have.

III. Slip – You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, miss to spend it on your passions. Yes even our prayers are often misdirected, spent on passing things of this world.

We don’t hesitate to ask God for money, for health, or for that promotion. But when do we ever ask for holiness, whatever it takes? When do we ask for the grace to forgive, to love our enemies, to have better-ordered priorities? Too often we don’t. But Lord, would you please do something about my arthritis?

And thus our prayers “slip” or miss the mark. We ask for worldly things and do not seek the things that matter to God. We don’t ask for what He really wants to give us.

IV. Spouse – Adulterers! Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the Spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he bestows a greater grace; therefore, it says: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

The Lord places our struggle here in personal and relational terms. Our disordered passions, our lust for this world, are a form of adultery. We prefer these other lovers to our true spouse, who is God. Adulterers!

And boldly, too, the text speaks of a jealous God, who will not so easily give up on us, who will seek to draw us back from our false lovers to His true love. He does this by repulsion and attraction. He resists the proud and seeks to break every form of pride in them, and He bestows grace on the humble.

Given the mess that we are in, given our disordered passions and wandering hearts, what are some remedies? The text presents them in two basic parts: submission and sorrow.

V. Submission – So submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and have purified your hearts, you of two minds.

In the first place, we are to submit to God and draw close to Him. To submit is to be placed under the authority of another. Thus we must let the Lord have increasing authority in our lives as we willingly hear His word and seek to heed it. Paradoxically, it is this very submission that brings us increasing freedom. For the Christian, freedom is the capacity to obey God.

To draw near to God is seek His presence with increasing affection. Prayer is a way of paying attention to God, of being aware of His presence and work in our life. As we open the door to Him, He increasingly enters our life and goes to work repairing our disordered drives.

The text also speaks of resisting the devil. Note the “re” in resist; it indicates a repetitive action. We stand against the devil not just once, but again and again; it is a lifelong battle. But note that the text says that ultimately our resistance will cause the devil to depart.

And thus by this work of God our hands are increasingly cleansed from our sinful practices and our hearts are “purified.” I put purified in quotes because here it means more than just merely clean; it means single-hearted, free of all sorts of admixtures that come from being double-minded. James says elsewhere, The double-minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8). The fact is, we want too many conflicting things. This messes with our mind and further divides our heart. It is the source of a lot of our suffering and discontentedness.

God wants to heal this bad condition in us. He wants us to draw close and to submit to His authority and vision for our life.

VI. Sorrow – Begin to lament, to mourn, to weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

There is a place for holy sorrow over our sins. This is very different from the gnawing guilt that comes from the accuser (who is Satan) or from our flesh and pride. St. Paul speaks of godly sorrow in Corinthians:

I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal … (2 Cor 7:9-11).

Therefore, James advises a healthy lament for our sins. He says that we should cease making light of the sinful world and taking too much joy in this present evil age. Sin should be mourned over, not laughed at or made light of.

Let us come before God humbly and let Him go to work to exalt and perfect us.