I’m running through all my studies in the Jewish Christian Letters first for content before sending them through the grammar grinders. Yesterday I finished Hebrews and today I ran through James. I recall not so long ago a gentle dispute with someone over what James had to say about materialism. The first paragraph below is more or less what I had at the start of Chapter 5, but the second paragraph I added based on that discussion:
All creation is a tool for God’s glory. People who trust in material things and worldly power cannot serve that glory. We trust the Creator, not the creation. James continues with a prophetic warning to anyone who takes comfort in their worldly wealth. The image of gold and silver corroding is not meant literally, but that they corrupt the heart. Western Christianity shares with the Pharisees a horrifying blindness to this truth: When you turn to Christ, all you are and have becomes His. If you then die wealthy, it is hard to imagine you were obedient. Call it what you will, but people in church who don’t hurry to deploy their material possessions for the Kingdom, seeking to purchase His greater glory here below, aren’t Kingdom people. James cries out in a warning: If you cling to this world, you will be owned by it; you will perish when the Lord comes to destroy this world. Let Him return to find us penniless because we were faithful stewards.
We take a moment here to crush the particular Western sin of materialism. God’s Word insists the most important thing you can do for your children is let them see your otherworldly disregard for material possessions. Using children as an excuse for being a tightwad is not supported in Scripture, any more than giving from a false sense of guilt. We have allowed the feminist nest-feathering demon to dominate our understanding of this issue. Women are cursed by the Fall, same as men, and acquiescing to their demands over every little thing that touches their motherhood instinct is as wrong as eating the Forbidden Fruit. Voluntary poverty, children and all, is not a sin if creature comforts require a spiritual compromise. Don’t let the secular world define your morality. Learn how to address your convictions, not your feelings and reason on such things. James would hammer the modern Western churches at least as much as those he addressed in his letter.
While we can point to Western middle class merchant culture, it’s not the same as saying everyone with a middle class income is evil. That I would have to say that is precisely what’s wrong with Western reading of Scripture.
