The National Motto of Hell--February 16, 2022

The National Motto of Hell--February 16, 2022

"But if you have envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.  Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.  For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind." [James 3:14-16]

I'm pretty sure that the national anthem of hell is Frank Sinatra's "My Way." And if they have official mottos there in the realm of perdition, I have a sneaking suspicion that all the coinage of the realm is stamped with these twin creeds:  "What's in it for me?" and "You can't make me!"  In fact, I dare say the entire political and economic order of hell could be spun out of those--indeed, a whole philosophy of life.

I don't mean to be glib or crude here, just to say that the contrast is stark between the way of God's Reign and the "me-first" mentality of hell. And I dare say that difference is what James is driving at in this passage.  James is trying, as clearly and emphatically as he knows how, to show us that there are two different ways of approaching life, and each has its own sort of "wisdom" or way of attaining "the good life."  They have competing definitions of what "success" looks like, and they have opposing guidance for how to achieve it. (What frightens me, honestly, is how close the mindset of hell seems to what passes for conventional wisdom in our time and place now.)

The central question is this: am I oriented inward toward myself alone, or am I oriented outward for the good of others and of all (trusting, yes, that I will not be forgotten in the mix there)?  When everything is about me seeking my own interests, everything becomes a transaction. Everything becomes a scheme, a deal, a scam to get something from others.  And it reduces all my relationships to matters of what I can get from them--it turns people into commodities and objects, not as faces who are beloved and worthy of good things for themselves.  The key idea here from James is a word that the NRSV translates as "selfish ambition," and it's got the feel of "seeing everything in life as a transaction" or "only doing things when you'll get something in return for what you do."  It's the idea that you may do something that helps someone else, but really only as an investment for what they will do for you in return, whether now or later.  It's the idea that people are only important insofar as they can get you something, but other than that they are expendable.  And it is utterly graceless.

In other words, this kind of terrible "wisdom" is what it looks like when you insist on asking, "What's in it for me?" before ever doing a kindness for someone else.  It's the way of life that unfolds from petulantly demanding, "You can't make me!" when you are asked to be considerate of others.  And James sees all sorts of terrible outcomes for a life--or, God forbid, a whole national culture!--based on those two slogans.  Like he says, "where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind."  If every choice I make is rooted only in my own sheer self-interest, mercy is not possible.  Trust is not possible.  Decency and common good get thrown out the window.  And even what passes for "love" in that kind of society will really just be arrangements of using other people for what they do for you, not loving them regardless of their capacity to pay you back.  

This "earthly, unspiritual, devilish" way of seeing the world says, "Dump your spouse if they get sick or difficult to live with, or if a more attractive model comes along." It insists, "My comfort and convenience are most important to me, so I will not do small actions that could help or assist others who are more vulnerable than I am." And it assumes that the goal of life is to get as much for yourself as possible while giving as little of yourself away, and all the while, refusing to bow or bend to anyone else--you know, as the Chairman of the Board sang it, "I did it my way."

The thing about this whole way of living and seeing the world is that it becomes its own punishment.  This is what I mean by saying that "What's in it for me?" is like a national motto for hell--because a life seriously lived with that as your lens of reality becomes utterly hellish.  As much power, wealth, and celebrity status as you might attain with that as your slogan, it all rings hollow in the end, with relationships crumbling to dust, the terrible fate of never really being loved by others, and the paralyzing fear that you'll be forgotten and left behind when you don't have anything worth offering anyone else anymore.  It may sell books to promote everything in life as a matter of making "deals," but in the end, a transactional way of thinking and living is a terrible fate.

James is simply trying to warn us of what happens when we build our lives on that kind of thinking.  And once you start with, "What's in it for me?" as your philosophy of life (a la Lucy Van Pelt from the Charlie Brown musical), you are already headed down a dead-end road.  It becomes a complete system of thinking and acting. It will dictate who you vote for, how you run your business, how you treat your neighbors, and how you deal with the challenges that come your way, from aging to job change to price-inflation to a world-wide pandemic.   And it becomes harder and harder to pull out of that way of life the longer you accept it as the truth.

Tomorrow, James will show us the alternative he would offer--what God's kind of wisdom looks like as opposed to this pitiable, damnable "Me-and-My-Group-First" approach.  But for now, maybe it is enough for us to take an honest look at our own lives to see where we've been suckered into this way of thinking.  It may be uncomfortable to face where we've fallen for it, but because that damnable mindset of transactional "What's in it for me?" thinking can do so much damage where we let it fester, it's worth doing the hard work of pulling it out like a splinter in our souls before it works its way any deeper.

So let's look.  Let's take James' hand like we did when were children and mom or dad held the tweezers to our injured fingers or feet, and let's allow that splinter to be taken out.  And let's dare to turn to the alternative--the way of life rooted in God's own self-giving love.

Lord God, we confess that we have been suckered into terrible ways of living and told they were the best of the world's wisdom.  Help root it out, and pull us into a new way of living, growing in the good soil of your deep love.