“Conservative” ≠ “Republican”

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Doug Brady, one of my fellow contributors at C4P, put up an interesting post a few days ago analyzing recent polls showing support for Sarah Palin dropping among self-identified Republicans. Sparked by the fact that these polls show Mike Huckabee as a frontrunner when nobody takes him seriously as such, Doug has come up with an explanation that makes a lot of sense.

We keep hearing that conservatives are leaving the Republican Party in droves and that the primary reason for this is that the establishment GOP is becoming more and more Democrat-light. Rasmussen’s poll, which indicates that 73% of Republicans believe the DC elite in the party has lost touch with the base, is strong evidence of this. We also see this in Governor Palin’s endorsement of Doug Hoffman in NY-23. Even stronger evidence is the fact that even though 40% call themselves conservative, only half, or 20%, call themselves Republicans.

If I received a call from a pollster today, Scott Rasmussen for example, and he asked me to identify my party, I would not identify myself as a Republican. From the above polling data, about half of conservatives would do the same as me. This is important. I don’t know Rasmussen’s precise methodology but I suspect, when he polls for Republican primaries, he excludes Democrats and Independents, using self-identified Republicans for his sample. I further suspect that most of those conservatives who no longer call themselves Republicans (like me) are also those most likely to support Governor Palin. Further, these disaffected conservatives are least likely to support a fiscal liberal like Mike Huckabee or a plastic establishment Republican like Mitt Romney.

In short, the sample may be predisposed to exclude a greater percentage of conservatives who are disgusted with the Republican Party and thus don’t self-identify as Republicans. This would result in an under sampling of those most likely to support Governor Palin and conversely, an over sampling of those most likely to support someone else. This would explain why Huckabee over performs in these polls. Those Republicans who still identify themselves as such are far more likely to be moderate establishment types and, therefore, more likely to eschew a grass roots movement conservative like Governor Palin in favor of a “conventional” choice like Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney. If my logic is accurate, this is bad news for Mitt Romney. These are the very Republicans he should be dominating, and yet he isn’t.

For my own part, I wouldn’t identify myself to a pollster as a Republican either, though that’s as much for theological reasons as anything. That doesn’t translate to primaries, though, since I identify myself by party there in order to be able to vote in the desired primary; as such, I don’t believe Doug’s application of his logic to presidential primaries actually holds. For the rest, though, I think he has a very good chance of being right—indeed, I’m quite sure he is to at least some degree. To my way of thinking, the question is less “Is this skewing Gov. Palin’s poll numbers?” than “Does this foreshadow the demise of the Republican Party?” Could the GOP end like the Whigs? Absent a successful reconquest by Gov. Palin and the rest of the Republican wing of the Republican Party—yes, and for much the same reason: a failure of principle.

The keystone: humility

Posted on by | No Comments

The connection between my last two posts—the first on why we should talk with those with whom we disagree, and the second on the nature of wisdom—may not be all that obvious, but I think it’s a profoundly important one. Specifically, the connection is humility, which is necessary for both, and which comes from both. It takes humility to talk with those we believe are wrong, not so that we can demonstrate to them how wrong they are, but in a receptive way that is open to what we might learn from them; and doing so teaches us humility, which helps us to grow wise. Wisdom in its turn breeds humility, and teaches us how much we have left to learn from others.

This might sound like a strange thing to say, but it’s true: wisdom is humble. Humility even more than wisdom is underrated, not the sort of thing we tend to praise people for, because it doesn’t draw attention to itself—and because we often tend to consider pride a good thing. From the point of view of the Scriptures, though, humility is one of the virtues which is supposed to define the people of God. The Catholic priest and philosopher Ernest Fortin went so far as to call it

the Christian virtue par excellence . . . humility first of all of a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many. But humility as well for the believer—to understand that all is grace; that we have no right to claim anything as our own—not our life, not our gifts, not even our faith. We are at every moment God’s creation.

Think about that: we worship “a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many.” That’s straight out of Philippians 2. No one ever had more reason to put his own interests and desires first, or to glorify himself, than Jesus; and yet he let go of glory, he let go of all the things pride values, and humbled himself to become a mere human being—and not even one who lived a rich, comfortable life, but a vagabond from the working class; and even beyond that, he accepted the horrible death of a convicted criminal. And he did it all for us, out of love, and set us his example to follow—and Paul points to that in 1 Corinthians 1 and calls Jesus our wisdom from God.

Does this mean, then, that God calls us to look down on ourselves, to put ourselves down and dismiss ourselves as unimportant? No. Those sorts of attitudes are counterfeits of true humility, and are really just pride in disguise; they still focus our attention inward, on ourselves, and they still put us at the center of everything we do. True humility takes our focus off ourselves altogether; it’s what Paul means when he writes in Romans 12:3, “Don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” Humility is seeing ourselves clearly, in the light of God’s holiness and grace, and accepting what we see; it is the place where we are well aware both of our weaknesses and failures and of our glories and strengths, and don’t make too much or too little of either, because we know that our value and importance rests not in what we have done or what we can do, but only and always in the fact that God made us and loves us. As C. S. Lewis put it, someone truly humble could design the most beautiful cathedral ever built, and look at it and know it to be the most beautiful cathedral ever built, and enjoy it just the same as if someone else had done it.

This is why the Scriptures consistently associate humility with wisdom—to take another example, Proverbs 11:2 says, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but wisdom is with the humble.” Wisdom begins with the understanding of our own limits—that is, I think, part of the reason for the declaration in Psalm 111:10 that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; one of the reasons for that is the recognition of just how great God is, and how small and limited we are. Wisdom requires the acceptance that we never know as much, we never understand things as well, we’re never as smart or as far ahead of the game, as we think—and that in consequence, we need each other. That requires humility.

We must humble ourselves before each other if we are to learn from each other; we must humble ourselves before God if we are to grow in his wisdom; we must humble ourselves to receive correction and rebuke if we are to learn from our mistakes; we must humble ourselves to confess our immaturity if we are ever to mature. We must humble ourselves to accept and admit our incompleteness, our brokenness, our sinfulness, if we are ever to be made complete, whole, and holy. And in the last analysis, we must humble ourselves to understand that “all is grace,” that none of us are self-made, but that “we are”—all of us—“at every moment, God’s creation,” if we are ever truly to be ourselves.

(Partially excerpted from “True Wisdom”)

 

Photo © John Salmon.  License:  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

What is wisdom?

Posted on by | 1 Comment

Looking over my previous post, it seems to me that lurking under the surface of my argument there is a deeper concern: how do we move beyond trying to feel that we’re right, and actually begin to become wise? In that, I think I might be moving a bit against the grain of Western culture; in this place and time, calling someone “wise” is still considered to be a compliment, but it’s not necessarily the sort of compliment that breeds emulation. We may recognize wisdom as a good thing in the abstract, but I don’t know that it’s something our culture really prizes all that much.

Indeed, I’m not at all sure that as a culture, we’re even all that clear on what wisdom is. We tend to get it mixed up with the other things that we think of as related to our minds, with knowledge and understanding and intelligence—which isn’t helpful, because wisdom isn’t any of those things. Granted, to exercise wisdom, it helps to have a lot of knowledge, but there are many people for whom great knowledge just means the chance to be greater fools. Similarly with intelligence; intelligence can amplify wisdom, but it can’t increase the number of wise options available. It can, however, allow for the invention of lots of new ways to be foolish. Understanding is good and necessary, but we can begin to take pride in our understanding, and when that starts to happen, it can lead us astray very quickly. As the saying goes, logic is often nothing more than a way to go wrong with confidence.

Wisdom, by contrast, is all about being able to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s about facing the questions, “Is this a good idea, or not? Is this the right thing to do, or not?” and being able to answer those questions correctly. It is the ability to perceive the best thing to do—and then to go and do it. If someone can tell you what they ought to be doing but doesn’t go out and do it, we don’t call them wise, we call them a very particular sort of fool. Wisdom isn’t wisdom until we put it into practice; it’s all about how we live. Wisdom is about doing truth, not just knowing truth.

(Partially excerpted from “True Wisdom”)

Thoughts on argument and talking with “the enemy”

Posted on by | 3 Comments

inspired in part by Penn Jillette—not that these are new thoughts for me, but just that his video that I posted the other day has me thinking about them.

The sort of encounter Penn describes in that video is one which is drearily familiar to a lot of us on the conservative side of the American church. It’s a type of spat I’ve seen many times (and in which I’ve participated) during my time serving within the Presbyterian Church (USA), as an ex- or soon-to-be-ex-member of the PC(USA) lambasts someone who is not leaving the denomination: “How can you stay in that denomination?! They deny the authority of the Bible, they are faithless to the teachings of Christ, they have denied their heritage, they have compromised the Christian faith beyond recognition! The Word of God is not rightly preached, the sacraments are not rightly administered, and church discipline is not only not rightly exercised, it’s mocked and rendered unenforceable—the marks of the true church are nowhere present! That denomination is apostate, your money is going to causes contrary to the Word of God, and you are aiding and abetting it! They are using you to do evil! Why haven’t you left yet?!”

Yeah, I’ve heard that sort of thing once or twice before. In my own case, it’s actually ironic, since I’m not Presbyterian by ordination; I am ordained in the Reformed Church in America, and all I’d have to do to leave the denomination is go serve a different congregation (though I have no intention of doing so). I am only Presbyterian in that God has called me—twice in a row, now—to serve in this denomination. Of course, from a theological perspective, I don’t believe God does anything by accident, and so I operate from the understanding that I serve as an evangelical within the PC(USA) because God wants me to, for reasons which serve his good purposes; and from that I draw what seems to me to be the reasonable inference that there are others, probably many others, whom he calls likewise.

I further point out that the PC(USA)’s liberal wing is far from all of the denomination, that to pronounce them apostate is to declare them to be in desperate need of the gospel and grace of Jesus Christ, and that to respond to that need by turning one’s back on them and cutting ties with them is a profoundly un-Christlike stance. Whatever anyone on the Right might say about the Presbyterian Left, Jesus could have said far worse about the Pharisees and Sadducees (and with far more right to do so, since unlike any of us, he was sinless)—and yet he didn’t break off all contact with them. Instead, he kept right on preaching to them just like he preached to all the other sinners he met.

I make these points, and I make others, but somehow, they never impress my interlocutors much. They point me to Paul’s command to the Corinthians to cast out the guy having the affair with his stepmother, and they hit me with lines like “Come out from among them and be separate”; I point out that these are all commands dealing with the local congregation, and that we have no Biblical warrant for what they’re talking about—we have no example of, let’s say, Paul commanding the churches in Sardis and Colossae to cut ties with the church in Ephesus because of the outbreak of heresy there—but they remain unmoved. It could be that my arguments are just that bad, but (biased though I may be) I don’t think they are. Rather, though I’m not going to label those firing on me from my right as heretics or pay them back in kind (I’ve been called a heretic once or twice by those folks, but I have no desire to return the favor), I do believe they’re wrong, on a fairly basic level. I don’t say they’re wrong in their own decision to leave—I would have no way of even beginning to know—but I do say they’re wrong in judging all those who do otherwise.

Now, of course, the term most frequently applied by folks on the Left when they want to smear Christians on the Right is “fundamentalist”; they love to use the same word for folks like the Taliban so as to imply that conservative Christians, too, believe in murdering their daughters for smiling at men. It’s really a pretty slippery term, due to the ways it’s been used; in its origins, fundamentalism was and remains a good thing, denoting a commitment to the fundamentals of Christian faith and the concomitant refusal to fudge or elide those fundamentals for the sake of compromise with the world. In that sense, though I might offer a slightly different list as properly fundamental or first-order, I too could be quite properly described as a fundamentalist.

There is another sense, however, in which I am not by any means a fundamentalist; that would be the sense that drives the difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals in America, and has ever since the likes of Charles Fuller and Carl F. H. Henry led that separation a half-century ago. It’s less a matter of theological commitments (or at least, it once was) than of one’s attitude and approach to culture; to grossly oversimplify the case, the stream which continued to be known as fundamentalism believed in taking the command to come out and be separate very broadly, holding themselves apart from all unsaved culture (something of the Roger Williams approach), while the stream that would come to be called evangelical believed in taking the risk of exposure to culture for the sake of being able to reach and (one hopes) transform the culture.

As such, the argument I’m talking about could be described as a form of the evangelical/fundamentalist argument—and so could the argument Penn had with Tommy Smothers. The spirit and attitude that is commonly meant when most Americans talk about fundamentalism, after all, is one which exists within all movements, not merely within Christianity (or Islam, for that matter); it exists among liberals and atheists, too. Tommy Smothers, in attacking Penn on that occasion, was operating out of what can only be called the most closed-minded and arrogant sort of fundamentalist spirit and approach, while Penn was playing the evangelical role. (That, as I recognize even if he doesn’t, is the reason why this video, as well as the earlier one in which he tells of his encounter with a Christian fan who gave him a Bible, have struck such a chord with so many Christians.)

Now, standing up and advocating talking respectfully and honestly with “the enemy” is the sort of thing guaranteed to get one shot at by members of “one’s own side,” and usually by people who have no compunction about pulling out the heaviest artillery they can find (not always merely rhetorical, either) and blazing away indiscriminately. At the same time, if you talk with those with whom you legitimately disagree about major things, just because you are trying to be respectful and to listen to them honestly doesn’t mean they’re going to have any such commitment in response; oftentimes, they’ll unlimber the biggest cannon they have and fire at will, too. All of which is to say, this can be little more than a good way to put oneself at the center of a circular firing squad. Why bother? Why on Earth would one want to put up with that? Why not just shut up, give up, and go do something else?

There are a couple reasons for persevering in such an approach despite the difficulties it entails. One is that for our own sake, we need to get outside our comfortable little echo chambers and talk to people who have points of view with which we disagree, concerns and interests different from our own, and questions we haven’t already learned to answer in our sleep. We need this because if we only talk seriously with people who confirm us in our own opinions and priorities, that breeds arrogance and ignorance. It leaves us thinking we know and understand more than we actually do, which gives us a higher opinion of our judgment and the rightness of our ideas than either actually warrants; it leaves us ignorant of why people actually disagree with us, of what they actually think and believe and value, and why (think of Pauline Kael’s fabled reaction to Nixon’s victory—she was bewildered that he could have won, because she didn’t know anyone who voted for him); and it leaves us unable to properly perceive the flaws and faults in our reasoning and ideas (or, for that matter, in ourselves).

The truth is, there are always things we need to learn that we’re highly unlikely to learn from those who agree with us, because they’re likely to have the same blind spots—and even if they don’t, they’re not likely to be motivated and looking to see them in us. We’re only likely to learn them from those who disagree with us, who are looking for the chinks in our factual, logical and rhetorical armor, because only those who are looking for those chinks (usually to take advantage of them) are going to spot them and point them out to us. It’s only when we’re tried and tested that we truly discover our weaknesses, much less find the motivation to address them—and it’s only when challenged by someone who disagrees with us and is motivated to try to prove us wrong that our beliefs are truly tried and tested.

This is, of course, exactly the reason we so often tend to avoid such conversations; and at its root, it’s a perfectly natural discomfort with learning. Anytime we enter a serious conversation, we create the possibility that we might learn something. That sounds like an unalloyed positive, because we’ve been taught to think it is, but psychologically, it isn’t, at least for adults. After all, to learn something means to have it demonstrated that we were either wrong or ignorant on a given subject; this is uncomfortable at some level even when it comes from people who agree with us, who are likely to be teaching us something we find congenial and to be doing so in a gracious spirit. To learn something from someone who disagrees with us is frequently far more discomfiting, because it may very well be something we don’t want to hear, and will often be delivered in a triumphalist spirit—as their “victory” over us. Emotionally, this is something we would prefer to avoid.

Even so, we need to persevere. We need to do so for our own sake, and also because part of showing respect for other people is taking them seriously, which means we have to take their beliefs and arguments seriously. To do so in any meaningful way, we have to engage those beliefs and arguments as seriously as we are able. That seriousness is, of course, limited in part by their willingness to engage with us, which is something we can’t control; it’s also, often, limited by their emotional connection to their beliefs—some people, by temperament, are inclined to take any disagreement with their beliefs as a personal attack on them as individuals, and thus respond to disagreement poorly, improperly, and in ways which are not constructive. This was a lesson it took me a long time to learn, to recognize that there are such people and that they must be approached differently, and far more carefully, than simply through intellectual argument.

That said, if people are willing to have a serious, substantive, respectful discussion of their beliefs and ours, and if the circumstances permit, then we need to match their willingness. To refuse to engage with the beliefs of others is to treat them with disrespect, because it’s essentially to say that their beliefs aren’t worthy of being taken seriously—which implies that we don’t think they are worthy of being taken seriously. To take an idea seriously is to test it, to apply stresses to it to see if it holds up, factually, logically, and in other ways; we should always do so with an open mind, not assuming its failure before we ever begin the test. We do so, of course, by argument, deploying the facts and reason at our command in an effort to break it down, because that’s the only way we have to tell if an idea is in fact valid. The goal is not, or should not be, “winning,” being seen to be right and to prove another person wrong; the only proper goal of argument is to discern truth.

This, as far as I can tell, is the approach Penn is taking in talking with those who don’t share his positions; and this is what Tommy Smothers denounced as being wrong in itself. That fact suggests that Smothers’ real concern is not for truth—actually, it suggests that at some level, he’s afraid he might be wrong about some important things, and is strongly resistant to allowing himself (or anyone else within earshot) to consider that possibility. This is very human, and indeed a common psychological response to the awareness of dissent; but it’s far from noble, and stunts our intellectual and spiritual growth.

Now, there are those who would argue for the sort of defensive response Smothers showed on the grounds that it’s necessary to protect the truth; but I disagree. God tells us to stand firm in the truth, but I don’t recall him ever telling us to protect the truth. In a very real sense, I don’t believe truth needs to be protected—it can take care of itself, because God can take care of himself, and truth is of God; and while people’s adherence to the truth may be far more fragile, protecting believers from any sort of challenge is neither a helpful nor a productive way to address that fact. We must, rather, work to address it by deepening and strengthening their understanding of the truth, and their knowledge of and relationship with the God who is Truth; and we do so not by protecting them from questions and challenges, but rather by helping them face those questions and challenges.

Part of that is helping them to understand that just because they don’t have an answer to a given question does not mean that there is no answer to that question; oftentimes, there is, but we just don’t know it yet. That, too, is one of those things one learns by arguing out issues with people who disagree with us—including that it applies just as well to them as it does to us: just because we pose a question or a challenge that someone else can’t answer doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer for it. (If we fail to understand or remember that fact, sooner or later we’ll get blindsided for our arrogance.)

Indecision is the worst decision

Posted on by | 2 Comments

and as this video highlights, that’s where the White House has left us in Afghanistan, with real and deleterious consequences:

For my part, I think pulling out of Afghanistan and abandoning our allies to the Taliban would be a mistake—but better that than leaving our troops twisting in the wind. Better just to yank the tooth and get it over with than to let it rot in place like this. Macbeth’s comment is not exactly to the point, but seems apposite to me nevertheless:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly.

—Macbeth, in William Shakespeare, Macbeth, I.VII.1-2

HT: Tim Lindell

Found on the Internet

Posted on by | 7 Comments

years ago, in someone’s sig file:

“Bother,” said Pooh. “Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump. Piglet, meet me in transporter room three. Christopher Robin, you have the bridge.”

Moved by grace

Posted on by | No Comments

God’s grace is the driving force of all change. . . . God’s grace has both an inward and an outward movement that mirror each other. Internally, the grace of God moves me to see my sin, respond in repentance and faith, and then experience the joy of transformation. Externally, the grace of God moves me to see opportunities for love and service, respond in repentance and faith, and experience joy as I see God work through me.

—Bob Thune and Will Walker, The Gospel-Centered Life

One more quote from Of First Importance for the night, because this quote they posted yesterday is also brilliant; in fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this put better.

Growing to identify with Christ

Posted on by | No Comments

Identity is a complex set of layers, for we are many things. Our occupation, ethnic identity, etc., are part of who we are. But we assign different values to these components and thus Christian maturing is a process in which the most fundamental layer of our identity becomes our self-understanding as a new creature in Christ along with all our privileges in him.

—Tim Keller

What an absolutely brilliant way of putting it. I’ve written before (at least with regard to politics) that as Christians, we are to find our identity in Christ and Christ alone, and that when anything or anyone else holds that place in our hearts, that we’re guilty of idolatry; but the Rev. Dr. Keller has the right of it in pointing out that in fact there are multiple levels to our identity and always will, and that learning to find our identity first and foremost in Christ is a process. It remains true, though, that whenever anything sidetracks us into finding our identity first and foremost in anything or anyone else, that is idolatry, and must be corrected.

HT: Of First Importance

The anti-transparency administration

Posted on by | 3 Comments

Despite the President’s bold initial words, that’s what his administration is turning out to be. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given the assault on the First Amendment conducted by his campaign in an effort to silence uncomfortable questions before the candidate had to face them; it shouldn’t startle us at all that his response to being challenged by a media organization would be to try to shut that organization down. As Charles Krauthammer writes,

there’s a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they’re engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There’s nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms.

Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand “the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties.” They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other—and an otherwise imperious government.

The problem is, we have an amazingly thin-skinned administration, one that can’t seem to take criticism, or even significant differences of opinion, with any sort of grace; which is all of a piece, I think, with the fact that they also can’t seem to take a joke. As such, they don’t roll with the tough questions, they don’t rise to the challenge of being argued with, and they don’t laugh at themselves—or even just let it pass when someone else does. Instead, whenever anyone messes with them, their collective instinct is to get out the biggest hammer they can find and try to smash them.

(Well, whenever any of their American opponents messes with them, anyway . . . if it’s a foreign country like Iran or China or Russia, their instinct is rather different, to say the least.)

True Wisdom

Posted on by | 1 Comment

(Jeremiah 9:23-24; James 1:12-18, James 3:13-4:3)

We have, I think, an interesting pattern going in the book of James. Back in 1:26, James says, in essence, “Do you think you’re religious? Check your conduct. Do you control your tongue? Do you indulge your desires, or do you take care of those in need?” In 2:8, he says, “Do you think you’re really keeping God’s law? Tell me this: do you play favorites?” The challenge in 2:14 is, “You say you have faith—do you have any evidence of that?” In 3:1, it’s “So, you think you’re ready to lead the church; can you control your tongue?” And now here in 3:14, he asks, “Which of you considers yourselves wise? Does your life show the fruit of wisdom in the way you conduct yourselves and deal with other people?” Again and again, we see James emphasizing the point that our thoughts and our attitudes produce results in our actions; it is, of course, a point rooted firmly in the words of Jesus, who told his followers in Matthew 7 that they would be able to recognize false prophets by their fruit, because the health of the tree is revealed in the fruit it bears.

Now, wisdom is something which was much prized in that day and age; I’m not sure it is so much now, but calling someone “wise” is still considered to be a significant compliment. But what is wisdom? I think often we’re not very clear on that. We tend to get it mixed up with the other things that we think of as related to our minds, with knowledge and understanding and intelligence, but it isn’t any of those things. Granted, to exercise wisdom, it helps to have a lot of knowledge, but there are many people for whom great knowledge just means the chance to be greater fools. Similarly with intelligence; intelligence can amplify wisdom, but it can’t increase the number of wise options available. It can, however, allow for the invention of lots of new ways to be foolish. Understanding is good and necessary, but we can begin to take pride in our understanding, and when that starts to happen, it can lead us astray very quickly. As the saying goes, logic is often nothing more than a way to go wrong with confidence.

Wisdom, by contrast, is all about being able to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s about facing the questions, “Is this a good idea, or not? Is this the right thing to do, or not?” and being able to answer those questions correctly. It is the ability to perceive the best thing to do—and then to go and do it. If someone can tell you what they ought to be doing but doesn’t go out and do it, we don’t call them wise, we call them a very particular sort of fool. Wisdom isn’t wisdom until we put it into practice; it’s all about how we live.

James highlights two important truths about wisdom. First, wisdom is humble. This is an underrated virtue, not the sort of thing we tend to praise people for, because it doesn’t draw attention to itself—and because we often tend to consider pride a good thing. From the point of view of the Scriptures, though, humility is one of the virtues which is supposed to define the people of God. The Catholic priest and philosopher Ernest Fortin went so far as to call it “the Christian virtue par excellence . . . humility first of all of a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many. But humility as well for the believer—to understand that all is grace; that we have no right to claim anything as our own—not our life, not our gifts, not even our faith. We are at every moment God’s creation.”

Think about that: we worship “a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many.” That’s straight out of Philippians 2. No one ever had more reason to put his own interests and desires first, or to glorify himself, than Jesus; and yet he let go of glory, he let go of all the things pride values, and humbled himself to become a mere human being—and not even one who lived a rich, comfortable life, but a vagabond from the working class; and even beyond that, he accepted the horrible death of a convicted criminal. And he did it all for us, out of love, and set us his example to follow—and Paul points to that in 1 Corinthians 1 and calls Jesus our wisdom from God.

Does this mean, then, that God calls us to look down on ourselves, to put ourselves down and dismiss ourselves as unimportant? No. Those sorts of attitudes are counterfeits of true humility, and are really just pride in disguise; they still focus our attention inward, on ourselves, and they still put us at the center of everything we do. True humility takes our focus off ourselves altogether; it’s what Paul means when he writes in Romans 12:3, “Don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” Humility is seeing ourselves clearly, in the light of God’s holiness and grace, and accepting what we see; it is the place where we are well aware both of our weaknesses and failures and of our glories and strengths, and don’t make too much or too little of either, because we know that our value and importance rests not in what we have done or what we can do, but only and always in the fact that God made us and loves us. As C. S. Lewis put it, someone truly humble could design the most beautiful cathedral ever built, and look at it and know it to be the most beautiful cathedral ever built, and enjoy it just the same as if someone else had done it.

This is why the Scriptures consistently associate humility with wisdom—to take another example, Proverbs 11:2 says, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but wisdom is with the humble.” Wisdom begins with the understanding of our own limits—that is, I think, part of the reason for the declaration in Psalm 111:10 that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; one of the reasons for that is the recognition of just how great God is, and how small and limited we are. Wisdom requires the acceptance that we never know as much, we never understand things as well, we’re never as smart or as far ahead of the game, as we think—and that in consequence, we need each other. That requires humility.

We must humble ourselves before each other if we are to learn from each other; we must humble ourselves before God if we are to grow in his wisdom; we must humble ourselves to receive correction and rebuke if we are to learn from our mistakes; we must humble ourselves to confess our immaturity if we are ever to mature. We must humble ourselves to accept and admit our incompleteness, our brokenness, our sinfulness, if we are ever to be made complete, whole, and holy. And in the last analysis, we must humble ourselves to understand that “all is grace,” that none of us are self-made, but that “we are”—all of us—“at every moment, God’s creation,” if we are ever truly to be ourselves.

This is essential because, as we saw, true wisdom is all about how we live. It’s profoundly practical, but not just in the sense of “whatever works”; rather, the focus of wisdom is on living a life pleasing to God. There are many aspects to that, of course, and we get a pretty good list here; but in this passage from chapters 3-4, James’ primary focus is on peace. True wisdom produces peace, while the wisdom of this world produces strife and disorder. This is because the wisdom of this world is characterized by envy and selfish ambition—it is focused on getting more. What that “more” looks like is different with every person. Some desire more pleasure. Some want more money and possessions. Some seek more power. Some long for more recognition. Some crave more excitement. We could keep the list going for a while, checking off all the things people think they need more of to make them feel fulfilled, and we’d probably still miss some. Whatever it is that people want to get, though, that’s where the world focuses its idea of wisdom: on how to get what it is that you want, or feel you need.

The problem is, as James points out, that such “wisdom” leads to disorder, conflict, and all sorts of evil behavior. The world justifies this in many ways, telling us it’s a dog-eat-dog world, that you gotta do what you gotta do, that all’s fair in love and war—our friend Joanie, in her college days, memorably declared to her mother that she was going to take Dave away from his girlfriend because “all’s fair in love and war, and this is war”—that you have the right to stand up for yourself, and whatever else we need to tell ourselves (and others) to justify us in going out and doing what we’ve already decided we want to do. At bottom is this idea that if I’ve determined I need that in order to be happy—whether it be that car, that man or woman, that job, that house—then whatever it might be, I have the right to have it, because I have the right to be happy. We seem to have forgotten that even the Declaration of Independence only tells us we have the right to the pursuit of happiness, not to be guaranteed to catch it and mount it on the wall with the rest of our butterfly collection.

And what happens? Conflict and pain and heartbreak as people fight over things, over opportunities, over relationships. Marriages are broken up, families torn apart, lives ruined; careers are wrecked and reputations destroyed as rivals sabotage each other; souls disappear into the maw of drugs, sometimes never to emerge again, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Whenever my fulfillment is my highest goal, and the way to achieve that is by getting more of whatever it is I think is going to fulfill me, I will necessarily treat you not as my equal to be respected but as an object which relates in some way to my need for fulfillment. You might be the person through whom I hope to find fulfillment by one means or another; you might be an obstacle to my fulfillment, which I must go around or find some way to remove from my path; you might be a rival who threatens my fulfillment, in which case I must find some way to defeat you; but whatever the case, you are at the most fundamental level a thing to me, not a real person, and deep down I will feel myself justified in doing whatever it takes to make sure that I get what I want with regard to you, because my happiness is at stake, and that has become my idol.

And thus, as James says, wherever that mindset prevails, you find fights and quarrels, disorder and every evil practice, sown by the Devil, who is the father of lies and the author of discord. That’s as true in the church as anywhere else. Why else do we have the term “worship wars”? Disagreement over the best way to worship was no doubt inevitable—people in the church have been disagreeing about the best way to do things for as long as there’s been the church. I’m sure even back when they met in the catacombs, there were probably differences of opinion as to whether they should put in carpet or just go with the natural stone floor. But why did those differing ideas turn into raging conflicts that split some churches and destroyed others? Because people saw questions of musical style and worship structure as questions of their own personal fulfillment, insisting that they had to have their way in order to be happy—and the discord, and the back-stabbing, and the quarrels, and everything else followed.

The only antidote to this is true wisdom, the wisdom of God, and the humility that his wisdom brings. It’s the humility that seeks to serve others and meet their needs, and thus is considerate and submissive. It’s the humility that remembers that we ourselves are sinners saved by grace, dependent on the mercy of God, and thus is willing to show mercy to others. It’s the wisdom that recognizes that when we insist on our own way and allow envy and selfish ambition to drive our decisions, even when we win, we lose, because we’ve set our hearts on things that cannot satisfy, at the expense of greater goods. It’s the wisdom that sees that what God offers us is in fact greater than anything this world can give, and thus that it’s worth letting go our death grip on earthly things to draw near to him—that friendship with God is in fact a far better thing, and far more fulfilling at the deepest levels of our hearts, than friendship with the world. It’s the wisdom and humility that enable us to hear God’s words in Jeremiah 9 with joy: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom—let not the strong man boast in his might—let not the rich man boast in his riches—but let him who boasts, boast in this and this alone: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”