God has children. The devil has his too. The facts that define these two “families” will shake us to the core. God’s fatherhood is utterly distinct from all others, so it is unrealistic for Abraham’s descendants to assume that they are automatically God’s children. Hence this rebuke from Yeshua of Nazareth. God’s children can have conflicts with neighbours but they always seem peaceful solutions, as did Abraham when the flocks he and Lot, his nephew, owned were too much for the small area they were occupying. If God were anyone’s dad they would love people.

The illusion of loving God and despising people

“Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me.” (John 8:42, NASB)

Despising just one person for any reason will threaten your boat. Imagine what the effect of writing off entire people groups with our biases can do to a “boat”!

A historic turning point

The people who decided, in the first century, against continuing to follow patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings became the targets of virulent hate, even in courts of law. “God is my dad” is inconsistent with evil discrimination. It is also incongruent with the Law of Moses because the law of Moses allows discrimination on the basis of food and drink consumed, and on the basis of days, times and years observed. You can also imagine how much water a sieve will carry when its purpose is to strain out the water of God’s fatherhood and tender love for humanity. It makes one wonder what human family and fatherhood might be about , if it does not come from the highest source and patterns.

A popular saying holds that it is through pain that humans achieve anything. “No pain, no gain”. A less popular saying proposes that God will have nothing short of exponential growth in the spiritual life of those he enlightens. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2, NASB)

Change is good vs traditions are inviolable

The more a person changes the more people think one is just dust in the wind. So we look for stability, even strict adherence to culture, religion, political affiliation and even family heritage. It is not entirely clear to me that changing often is a sign of perfection, but it must be true that the best examples of change only happen in nonhuman species. The caterpillar changes once, and the change is spectacular. Its perfection is not repeated. So let me propose that it is not repeated change that shows perfection. It is the dramatic change that we all expect and are usually incapable of manipulating that shows perfection.

Spectacular change expectations

24) Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25) He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.

John 12:24-25, NASB

35) But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?” 36) You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies;

1 Corinthians 15:35-36, NASB

We are not in control of perfection: it happens to us. Otherwise, we would be metamorphic practically every time we think we need a shift in our circumstances. Quite literally, hundreds of little changes are presented to us repeatedly, and we ignore them at our peril of stunted growth or stagnation. However, if you change your orientation often it is more likely that you are an example of imperfection than of perfection.

Boasting is typically forbidden behaviour.  The thing boasted about can disappear in a flash. Then what?  Giving God or anyone else a hallel (from the Hebrew verb halal, he praised) is also highly recommended.  It brings honour to God when someone boasts about divine attitudes and actions.  Compliments of our peers are also highly valued.  Here are a few examples.

• Mary is a poet whose work you should read
• I yell to God for help and he answers me
• The elders will vindicate the righteous person

When you have only two witnesses

Since the word for boastful pride – alazonEIa – appears only twice in the New Testament we have to carefully draft the lexicon entry for it.  When the translation varies we have one simple problem, but when the writers diverge significantly, as do James and John, we have some explaining that goes beyond translators’ preferences.

Let us read James 4:16 as “you boast in your boastful prides” and 1 John 2:16 as “boastful pride is not of the Father”.

Conversely we could propose that James 4:16 says “you boast in your arrogances” and 1 John 2:16 says that “arrogance is not of the Father”. 

There is something shady with making plurals of concepts like hatred, honesty, righteousness or gentleness. How many kinds of hatred might there be? How does that matter to those charged with guarding society from hatred?  Is there a version of gentleness that people need to be aware of? It is highly improbable that arrogance or empty boasting comes in designer or perpetrator versions.

We are not covering for the bigoted Pharisees

Since we are not writing lexicons, but rather interpreting a pair of sentences, we can extrapolate from the theological priorities of our two writers. James, a Pharisee and strict follower of Moses, has an interest in labelling behaviours for the purpose of indicting people. The law of Moses is not setting anyone free from their trespasses and violations. John, a dedicated companion and witness of Yeshua’s majesty, has an interest in setting buoys to help people steer clear of the rocks that can stymie Christian growth.

If James were telling his audience about the Advocate they have in heaven one might understand the dire consequences of “arrogances”, or deeply entrenched arrogance. Is God counting sins? The raised head of arrogance or boastful pride grieves God, and we can be sure that our resident Help, the Holy Spirit, is always pointing the way to the healthy patterns of living the eternal life God gives.

It is not only the racist, “small government for a huge country” club that looks back for the time they want to bring back.  All the religious movements of the last three centuries have either fabricated a conversation about what God takes pleasure in or they have presumed not to take ancient writings as settled spiritual nourishment.  They all major in minors: patriarchy, misogyny, food and drink, impoverished observances and rituals, shadows instead of substance.

We cannot improve the church

We can make ourselves grow at a faster rate by being more diligent to study God’s word and work for others’ advancement.  We can lose weight, gain weight, stop behaviours, start behaviours, fast or feast.  The church will always be an organism with weeds and grain.  The church will always be a graphic representation of God’s Son in his incarnate majesty, composed of both divinity and humanity. Since we are incapable of making one lock of our hair black or white it is futile to talk about bringing back the church from some kind of catastrophic fall.  Nothing prevails against the Church.

MAGA is a dying dog

Used to be great? What happened? Someone will have to explain what is great about males circling wagons to deny women to their place in society. The Taliban will never be the benchmark for a decent society, no matter what miracles or how many wise prophets they pull out of their hat.  Some nations and tribes would like us to believe that their thousands of years were not sufficient to put a cap on hate, corruption and bigotry.  When the record smacks of conspiratorial malevolence three strikes are too many, and another kick at the can for any such perpetrator is not in the cards.  We do not imagine Israel revisiting Sinai or the Plains of Moab to rewrite the covenants.  Americans have shown that they are not ready to stand up for their Constitution. The greatness that comes out of looking back had to be catastrophic.