As many of you know, I will be publishing James, a book on the letter of James, in early 2016. In anticipation of that, I will be posting snippets of the book for all of you to enjoy. Here is another sneak preview:

Word Play

Anne Sullivan may not be a familiar name to you, but her legacy as a teacher probably is. Born in 1866, she received her education at the Perkins School for the Blind and soon became the instructor for a girl who had become both deaf and blind before her second birthday. The doctors had determined that it was either scarlet fever or meningitis that caused this incredible loss. Anne was put to the test every day by her student’s outbursts and general lack of interest in Anne’s attempts to teach her. While the girl had created her own rudimentary signs for communicating with people, her ability to communicate was severely limited. She didn’t realize that Anne was trying to open up the world to her. One day, Anne put the girl’s hand under a spout, pumped some water onto her hand, and then formed the sign language symbol for “water” in the girl’s hand. This may initially have seemed to Anne like just another disappointing failure waiting to happen, but that was the moment where everything changed. It was as if the water had finally broken through into the girl’s consciousness and brought with it the light of knowledge. The girl finally realized what Anne had been doing all along. That entire day, the girl ran around grasping everything she could find and wordlessly pleading for Anne to show her what sign to use for it. Anne’s student, Helen Keller, went on to become a prolific author, philosopher, celebrity and Christian, all because of Anne’s perseverance and careful instruction.

Imagine where we would be without teachers like Anne Sullivan? Teachers like her have provided instruction, good examples, strength and encouragement to every type of student. Indeed, this is a wonderful thing: the world needs more teachers like Anne Sullivan. However, we know that there are no perfect teachers, and since they too are held to the standard of their words, we are presented with a dilemma when it comes to broken humanity. As James says, “For we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). Teachers face many obstacles, with the most noticeable ones being pride and laziness.

Humans are prone to speak from hearts of pride rather than of love. The teacher-student relationship places the teacher and student in positions of sharing and receiving, with the teacher having the greatest responsibility. Through the corruption of sin, the position of teacher has often been turned into a way to hold knowledge as a scepter, ruling over others with it. The proud teacher desires to know more and to be better than others for no other reason than to be above others, and so novelty gets exalted above truth and accuracy, arrogance above humility, and fanaticism above substance. This kind of teacher would rather acquire gifts in pride than receive them humbly from the ultimate source, as Simon the Enchanter attempted to do:

Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:18-20).

Rather than seeking to understand how the Holy Spirit was given, Simon saw it as an opportunity to become an even more powerful enchanter. He desired to skip the process that the disciples went through to receive the Holy Spirit and jump straight to “wielding the power”. He was deceived in his comprehension of the Holy Spirit and his soul flashed its true, self-consumed colors at the sight of God’s power. Victor Frankl, a renowned Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor, saw this same danger in the teachers of his day:

I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers. (“Victor Frankl at Ninety: An Interview,” in First Things, April 1995, p. 41.)

Ideas and words have consequences – for good or bad – and it is the responsibility of a teacher to be careful not to let ego and fascination create something hideous and damaging. Words have formidable power.

While pride is one serious hurdle for the teacher, laziness is another. Teaching quite often takes a substantial amount of preparation time and, if skipped or glossed over, can lead to providing misinformation, incomplete thoughts, and skewed perspectives that may damage an audience.

The words that teachers have spoken have shaped my life over the years. Think back on those in authority over you who have said things that greatly shaped your life. Are there moments burned into your neural pathways that are incredibly emotional? I hope you have many good memories about past teachers, but I know that’s not always the case. I’ve heard many stories about teachers declaring in front of the class that a particular student was dumb. Those words, whether spoken aloud or written in a report card, had significant potential to hurt, and they often did. When I think about it, I wonder what was going through the teacher’s mind at that moment. I contemplate how many of those teachers intended for their words to have such consequences. Were they genuinely intending to scar that student? Were they just distracted, upset by something else, or just plain tired? Of course, any reasoning for saying the hurtful words does not change the effect it had upon the student, but if it was unintentional it shows that carelessness can cause just as much harm as pride in many cases. Students are ultimately responsible for how they respond to the criticism, but that does not mean that the teachers are not responsible for cutting deep wounds with their words.

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, wrote, “Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.” In other words, it doesn’t take much for us to be lulled into a place of complacency. As soon as we’re not challenged or we get tired, mental and emotional slumber are about to come knocking. After all, constant vigilance in any occupation or activity is exhausting and unsustainable. Teachers cannot be expected to naturally sustain perfection in such an arduous activity as teaching.

Through various events and accounts in the New Testament, we find that the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ day were both prideful and careless in their teaching. Jesus, having seen the hypocrisy and damaging effects of their words, spoke this against them: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:33-37).

Before we move onto the main point that James is making in this section, I’d like to make it clear that I have no grudges or qualms with the teaching community. I greatly admire those who have invested their lives in the betterment of others. I say all of these things to point out the impossibility of perfection for any teacher, whether they fall because of pride, laziness or some other stumbling block. The point is that all teachers will mess up at one point or another whether they realize it or not.

If you don’t fill out forms with “Teacher” as your occupation, you may feel that this particular bit isn’t applicable to you. If you feel that way, I would ask you this: Have you ever given advice to someone about his or her life, marriage, relationship, job, kids, etc.? If you have, I would say that in that moment, you became a teacher. James is challenging us all as teachers in one capacity or another. Obviously, there are those in the school systems, churches, work, and other places that teach more often than others, but not having the title of “teacher” or “pastor” does not mean that your words are exempt from this instruction. After all, James includes all of us when he says, “For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body” (James 3:2).

In the end, anyone who gives instruction, guidance or advice to someone else clearly has the devil crouching at their door, waiting to trap them in pride, negligence perhaps or some other sin. By placing this topic directly after the discussion of faith and works, it appears that Jesus showed James the tie-in between faith, works and words. Actions are often louder than words, but as we’ll see in this section, our words not only shape others’ lives, but also determine our own lives’ directions and impacts.

In my own experience, the ratio of my thoughts to the actions I take is pretty high. There is much more going on in my mind and emotions at any given time than what I show through my actions. Jesus illustrated this through a metaphor: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). Notice that Bible verse doesn't say, "The mouth speaks exactly what the heart is thinking” but rather “out of the abundance of the heart”, meaning that it is what we fill ourselves with and meditate on that begins to leak and then pour out of us. We may see others or ourselves as being “good” because the actions are "clean", but often there is evil brewing in us that has not yet reached a tipping point. This verse is pinpointing the problem that we have: We assume that something cannot exist because we cannot see it or completely understand it. My challenge to you is to examine the condition of your heart and find where evil may be starting to bubble up. You probably won’t have to look hard at all.

So we see that our words are an overflow of our thoughts and emotions, but that is only part of the story. Our thoughts do construct our words, but our words also shape our thoughts and lives. James presents two examples at the beginning of the chapter to illustrate the powerful directive force of the tongue. In both examples of the horse’s bridle and the ship’s rudder, he identifies the physical smallness of the item and therefore the perceived insignificance of the power that they each have. Then, he reminds us how these two items, though physically small, contain the potential to direct the energy of both the horse and the ship; they are the guiding force. The horse is propelled by powerful legs and the ship by gusts of wind, but the bridle and the rudder are what channel power. In the same way, our hearts are full of potential energy that is waiting to be released. The existence of that energy is important, but if it is never unleashed or if it is misappropriated, the power inside of us is wasted. Our tongues shape our lives and direct our paths.

It may seem strange to you – it still seems strange to me – that our tongues would have such power. Why doesn’t James focus on our thoughts and intentions rather than our tongues? Aren’t our hearts and minds the driving forces behind all of our actions and words? This is certainly true, but God has divinely ordained that the firing of synapses and the physical movement of jaw muscle, tongue and vocal cord have the same sort of power that God’s words have. After all, we were created in his image. The words of God – not merely his thoughts and emotions – were what brought the world into existence and formed vegetation, animals, humans and everything else that we see and cannot see (Genesis 1-2). It was the word of God that directed the path of Abraham and his descendants to their destiny through his spoken promises. It was the Word of God that put on skin, bone and muscle and lived among humanity in the person of Jesus.

So which is more important: Faith, actions or words? As we discovered in chapter two, merely saying we are saved doesn’t make us saved, so we know that words by themselves are not able to accomplish everything. However, we also learned that good intentions and thoughts do not accomplish anything on their own either. It is through the marriage of our will and our words that the power of both is unleashed. Like in the example of the horse, we must start moving in order to make our words effective, but if we simply go off in any direction with our words and intentions contradicting each other, we will fall flat. Likewise, if we speak many words without meaning them, we get nowhere and are just flailing around in one spot, yanking our bridle back and forth with no progress. We are far too casual with our words and desperately unaware of their power.

So how does this marriage between faith, actions and words work? Our words can harness our lives effectively in a few ways. We can speak truth over ourselves when we are not entirely convinced of it, reminding ourselves of what we know is true. If we truly believe in Christ, there will still be times that we doubt or are pulled away from active faith. In those times, we must redirect our energy back toward Jesus by declaring scriptures about Jesus’ divinity, compassion, faithfulness and love to ourselves. I often find myself worn out and feeling as though I have been walking by myself, with Jesus nowhere to be found. In those moments, the thing that helps me the most is declaring Jesus’ presence with me and the fortifying strength that he desires to give me if only I accept it.

Another way our words can have great impact is through intercessory prayer, which means that our words are directed toward God asking him to change something for his glory, whether it be to heal someone, improve a financial situation, or have someone meet Jesus. Rather than just “wishing” something into existence, which is useless, our verbal petitions to God are potent and will be responded to.

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For more information on James, click here.