As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
13Come
now, ones saying, “We will go today or tomorrow into this city and spend one
year there and trade and make a profit.”14Whoever, you do not know
the matter of tomorrow. What [is] your life? For it is a vapor which appears
toward a little and then vanishes. 15Instead of this, you [ought] to
say, “If the Lord desires, we will also live and do this or that.” 16But
now you are boasting in your presumptuousness. All such boasting is evil. 17Therefore,
it is sin to one knowing to do good and not doing [it].
I have often bemoaned that pride is a self-concealing sin,
that, although it is a monstrous sin, the sin of the devil himself, yet we are
utterly blind to it until the Lord opens our eyes so we can repent of it. I
believe that in the present passage James is trying to do exactly this for us.
He is trying to open our eyes to another expression of our evil pride and one
which few ever recognize. I’ve certainly never seen this before. He would speak
to us of the sin of presumptuousness.
Presumptuousness. “I’m going here and doing this and that,
and then I’ll go there and do such and such and stay there for this long and
then I’ll …”
James says, “Really?” When we’re talking (and thinking) like
this we are forgetting two grand truths of our very existence: 1) We know
absolutely nothing beyond this present moment, and 2) our life is more frail
than tissue paper.
When we’re talking and thinking like this, we ought to hear
in our hearts those terrible words, “Thou fool! Tonight shall thy soul be
required of thee!” (Luke 12:20). Proverbs warns us, “Do not boast about
tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (27:1).
As I have been studying this for a couple of weeks, I
realize I’ve never really thought deeply about it. In this world, God has
granted us knowledge of the past and the present but not the future. We
may know much from not only our own past but of the very world itself. We are
allowed to know where we are at this very moment, what we are doing, what
others are doing around us. But there is an absolutely impassable wall between
us and even the very next second of our lives. We know with certainty nothing
of our future, neither immediate nor yet to come. “The future” is a realm to
which we are allowed absolutely no certain access. It is of grand significance,
this “future” of ours, yet we have been utterly denied access to it. God alone
holds that future. He alone knows that future and He alone will decide what it
holds. He alone knows “the end from the beginning” and He alone “inhabits
eternity.”
This is precisely the point where I believe James would
reveal to us a very, very subtle and utterly unrecognized expression of our
sinful pride – the refusal to accept this station to which the Lord has
assigned us, to be people of the past and present, while God alone entirely possesses the future. Presumptuousness. Refusing to accept that
“our times are in His hands” (Ps 31:15).
Practical atheism.
Is not this sin at the root of worry? Is worry not, in
reality, trespassing across this line between the present (our proper domain)
and the future (for us a “Forbidden Zone”)? Is worry not clamoring against this
limit God has given us? Is it not a restless refusal to accept that God has
withheld from us any certain knowledge of or control over our future? Is it not
an evil presumptuousness to paint in our minds what the future holds, to paint
it as if we have the power to create it, to control it? The future is rightly
God’s realm, not mine. He has assigned that I should live in the present.
Now, as far as the future, there certainly is a good and
proper activity of planning and preparation. “A wise man sees danger and takes
refuge.” “Go to the ant, you sluggard. He gathers now to supply his needs
later.” “What man among you, building a tower, does not first of all sit down
and make sure he has what he needs to finish it?” One could even say there is a
sense in which people do control their future. The Great Mandate was “Be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over
it” (Gen 1:28). We are to “take charge” of our future and work it out toward
the ends which God desires. On the other hand, we are quite capable of “messing
up” our lives and incurring consequences we’ll bear to our graves. But all of
these things are activities (good or bad) we undertake in the present. When it comes down to it, no matter how much we
“prepare” we have to remember “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord orders
His steps” (Prov 16:9). Joseph’s brothers “meant it for evil” but the Lord
worked it out for good “to the saving of many lives.”
So I guess that is my point. Although we certainly can make
choices which theoretically will incur good or bad consequences in the future –
and we actually should make good
choices to that end – yet all those activities must be undertaken in the
present, because there is always that great impregnable wall, that utterly
impassable barrier, that I have no knowledge or control even one second into my
future.
“We will go today or
tomorrow into this city and spend one year there and trade and make a profit.”
Yeah, right.
No wonder God calls it boasting. It must be profoundly
ridiculous to Him to hear us puffing and blowing about whatever it is we think
we’re going to do, completely without
any recognition of Him or the fact that our very breath is in His hand! No
wonder He says, “All such boasting is evil.”
The cure for our presumptuousness, says James, is to live in
the constant awareness of God’s presence and total control. “If the Lord will,
we will do this or that.” All we need to do is add this element of humility to
our planning and it immediately becomes something we rightly do. This element of humility saves us from our evil
inclination toward a presumptuousness that God condemns. I would suggest it is
simply a matter of clearly recognizing that wall between my present and even
one second into my future. The present is mine in which to live under God. The
present is mine to make choices which, under God, I believe will bear good
fruit in my future; but that future is totally God’s domain. I possess no
control over it and in fact have no certainty whatsoever I’ll even live to see
it.
One scary thought, though. Someone I was reading pointed out
that this statement, “Life is a vapor” is perhaps one of the most common
clichés known to man. Even the ancient Greek writers acknowledged it. Yet, who
anywhere honestly lets it have any effect on their life? It’s one of things
we’re all quite sure “we know” and yet we spend no thought on it and go on
living like it isn’t true. I suspect that is precisely why James ends with the
familiar maxim, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't
do it, to them it is sin.” In other words don’t be saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
know that.” The question is, do you live like you know it?
I’m probably a case in point. I feel like I’ve “known” this
my whole adult life and yet here I am pondering the subject like it’s never
crossed my mind before. Like all the faces of the sin of pride,
presumptuousness obviously hides itself in our hearts. It needs to be drug
kicking and screaming out into the light where we can see it for the evil it
really is and, in so doing, put it to death.
Definitely something I need to ponder, particularly as today
is my 58th birthday! I’m on the “other” end of life. Somewhere I
passed that point where I no longer have to ponder that life is short. The
reality of that thought now hovers over me. Yet, having said all that I’m still
not sure I “get it.”
Will ponder more, as I go about my day (– if the Lord
will!).
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