James

From what I could gather, the book of James seems to be the most applicable book to our lives now that we’ve been assigned to read. The book was written to the 12 tribes of Israel who disbanded from each other, but many of the commandments James have given here seem to be very general ones. For example, the faith without works argument is very simple and laid out here. If you have faith in God, but don’t do anything to show it, then your faith is dead. On the other hand, if you do works of God, you are showing that you have faith by demonstrating it via your actions. Where this becomes tricky, is the actual intent and mindset behind works. One could do many of the behaviors God calls us to do, but if his heart is not into it, then it’s not genuine. This is why the faith without works argument is still heavily debated today is what I think. I would like to discuss this topic more in class and hear the professor’s perspective on it, as I find this debate very interesting. Furthermore, something that resonated with me from the book was from chapter 3 in regard to Two kinds of Wisdom, and not boasting about the future. James says that we cannot know for sure what will happen tomorrow, so boasting about projections is basically stupid. He simply says that we should change our phraseology and mindset to something more like, “If it’s the Lord’s will, then we will prosper this coming quarter”.