James Lesson 10 – 4:1-3
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
First Impression?
This was a short section with a lot of meat in it that was going to spur the group to a lot of discussion. The core topic is a huge barrier for many Christians.
What do you know about the warring culture of first century Jews?
The group did not have much background in this. I read a little to prepare, but it has been quite some time since then. Our opinions on Jews have been forever altered by the events surrounding World War Two. The vision of frail, beaten down is hard to resist. But if you dig a little deeper, you see an arrogance and a fighting spirit that comes from being the chosen people of God. Being chosen does not make them better, but it sure can give them a streak of pride to stumble over. My view of the pre-Roman Jewish culture was one of willingness to fight anyone, anywhere. God was on their side, and they could not lose. Unless of course they abandoned God, and then anyone could beat them. And they were beaten often as they continued to abandon God as if that were their true nature.
Any thoughts on how this warring culture impacted their everyday personal relationships?
My guess is that they were like the overbearing neighbor who expects to win every dispute and does not care if you hate them. Our culture today is very anti-conflict, but haggling was a means of ensuring you got a fair deal, but stereotypes tell us the Jews haggled better/worse than anyone.
How would you describe America’s warring culture?
From Finding Nemo: ‘Mine! Mine! Mine!….. we, and myself strongly included, want our stuff and do not want to let anyone else have it. I am relatively generous in giving, but I am deeply bothered by someone just taking.
How does America’s warring culture impact our everyday personal relationships?
The basic drive is to find what is in it for me. We are friends only to those who help us and when someone can’t help us, we move on. We are supposed to find out how we can help others and do so, but that is almost anti-American Dream.
Do you ask God for things? What kind of things? Why?
I do. Everything I can think of. Because otherwise I will not get it. Sometimes I relent and do not ask Him for silly stuff I should not want, but I do try to ask Him for everything I do need and everything that I can want that does not seem sinful.
Star test results came out. Reported results passing rates: Asians 84%, Whites 66%, Hispanic 44%, Blacks 39%. Economically sound 70%. Poor 40%. How do our cultures relate to these results?
When you limit the culture to ‘how does it impact parenting’, cultural drives have a 100% direct correlation to how well kids do in school. Skin color is only impactful in how it aligns with culture. My parents gave me the drive for college. I did well in school and went beyond to grad school. Neither of them finished college and few in the rest of my extended family did either. There was something different about the culture even within my parents and their siblings.
What should we pray for on this topic and why?
We obviously cannot fix all the parents to give children the right direction. We obviously cannot fix all the schools to make up for this lack of parenting. God tells us we will always have the poor, and beyond just circumstances, people from cultures without the drive to succeed are going to often end up poor. We can pray that God will give us the words to say to our kids and the words to say to all those we come across to support taking responsibility for one’s own outcomes, while of course we admit only God has any control of them.