Still More on the Religious Spirit--Part 2

I am feeling a little provoked by a comment to this blog this morning. That is not a bad thing. Maybe it gets me back to something I should have done--in fact thought I would have done--several weeks ago. If you read the last post, it likely seemed incomplete. It seemed the same to me as well. I had thought there would be a follow-up and explanation sooner than this. Today I moderated a comment, which you can read, asking whether the next installment were coming soon. It is.

Did you take any time at all to meditate on the verses from James? They were chapter 3 verses 13 through 18 if you want to take a second look. To rehearse just a bit, the phrases "meekness of wisdom" and "bitter envy and self-seeking" from verses 13 and 14 are set in juxtaposition with one another meaning one or the other is our state. This applies to each and every one of us and to everything we do. To be as simple and straightforward as possible, we do everything from one of those two motivations. We are either acting in wisdom, which meekness tells us is not our own, but is from above, or our motivation is self-seeking. James even strengthens self-seeking by telling us that comes from bitter envy. If that does not initiate an "ouch" in your spirit, well, you might want to spend a little more time thinking about it.

I am fairly confident that I have never actually met a person who does absolutely everything in meekness of wisdom. I will give something like a shout out to the late Rev. Dale Holford. He is a great man and I still miss him being here on earth for me to talk with on occasion. He was in his late seventies when we had several conversations about people who acted out of self-seeking. He gave me some eternal perspective, which I, of course, did not fully appreciate at the time. The thing about a person who operates in the meekness of wisdom is that he or she is meek enough to understand the wisdom does not come from them and also too meek to tell you that. (Were this a Psalm, there would be a "Selah" there.) It is hard to find people like that.

In juxtaposition, finding people who are self-seeking is not difficult at all. They are literally everywhere. Of course I have to be very careful with my examples lest I become convicted myself. However, since this blog is really about the religious spirit, it might be best to take our examples from it's activities. (Whew, I was afraid I was writing myself into a corner there.) Okay, I am just going to tell you how I was first affected by a religious spirit, before I had any idea what it was. It was a lot of years ago and is going to be new information to most of you. Give me a little grace please.

Eugene Ryan was my speech teacher at Hancock College in the early 1970s. I really did not like the man at first. In fact I tried to change teachers, but was not able to do so. Today, I credit "Old Man Ryan" as he once referred to himself, for whatever ability I have to teach, preach, and speak as well as I do. He was a stickler for proper grammar, pronunciation, enunciation, and even posture during our classroom speeches. He taught me a lot and I found out during the two classes I had with him that I was more at ease doing public speaking than many of the other students were. That translated well to Bible college and homiletics classes. By and by I found that I really enjoyed people telling me how good I was at it. I mean I enjoyed it to the point that receiving the accolades became more important than teaching people how to live better lives--which, after all, is the point of sermonizing. I trust I have said enough that you understand the point? If not, then let me say, it was more important to me to be thought well of than to have lives changed by what I was doing.

This is getting a little longer than it probably should be so to sum up as briefly as possible, when we do things because they make us feel good, we are in danger of participating in what James called, "earthly, sensual, demonic" wisdom. (Think religious spirit.) We may be able to revisit this concept in the future, but if you can handle one more counter-intuitive thought, operating in the "meekness of wisdom" will make you feel good. That good feeling will come from the spirit rather than the soul. When we get to that point, literally everything in our lives will ascend on a heavenly trajectory. God bless!