JAMES 4:1-4 THE RELATIONSHIP KILLERS

1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. 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. 4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong or evil about desires and pleasures, or what some translators call “passions.” We are certainly called to desire godly relationships and a relationship with God. At the same time we are told that God is the source of true pleasure. Yet in this passage the root of our broken relationships within the Church community and with God is identified as our desires and pleasures. The problem lies in that our desires and pleasures are allied not to God but to self. Since it is impossible to find perfect satisfaction in anything that is imperfect, when we hinge our desires and pleasures on ourselves rather than God we will be frustrated and that frustration will spill over into hostility. When self-interest is our motivation, our frustration will always be directed at the other party in the effected relationship.

A young husband walks out on his wife claiming that she does not fulfill his needs. Business partners split up because they blame each other for the failure of the enterprise to thrive according to their expectations. The student publishes a negative evaluation of her professor because she did not get the grade she wanted. A church community divides as each side proclaims that the other is wrong and must be avoided. An individual experiences the death of someone precious to him and decides that he can no longer believe in a God who could allow that to happen. In virtually every case the root cause of the broken relationship is self-willed determination or passion in the service of self.

We live in a culture of radical individualism and many of us have been raised with the understanding that the only one you can ultimately rely on is yourself. Lip-service is given to God, but when the chips are down we tend to try first to depend on ourselves. If that does not work, then we try to enlist God in fulfilling our self-interest. But ultimately we end up blaming others and God. Self-centeredness is the way of the world, the root of all sin, and the most effective relationship killer.

Jesus provided us with the antidote for relational toxicity when he gave us the great commandment. He instructed us to love God first and then love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40). Friendship with God is expressed by serving him and the neighbors he has given you. Even in our prayers we need to strive to ask correctly; that is, for God’s will and the good of our neighbors.

Jesus, as you did all things according to the perfect will of the Father, remake me into his image so that I might also approximate the pattern you have given me. May I take seriously and effectually the words that I say about dying to myself and living for you and my neighbor. Birth me yet again this day into the child you intended me to be. Amen