There are some feral kittens who sometimes spend the day on my porch. They are not quite tame. If I get close to one of them, it will hiss and spit like a big bad cat. They don’t quite trust me, so they puff themselves up to scare me away—or, I suppose, at least to convince themselves that they can take care of themselves. I think of them as I pray with today’s readings. One theme to consider today is pride.
When do you battle pride? It doesn’t get me AFTER I’ve done something good. It gets me when I’m struggling, when I doubt myself, especially if I have opposition from someone. I go back to my “survival of the fittest” nature and begin to protect myself. I protect myself by thinking about how right I am, how just is my cause, how unfair or just plain wrong someone else or something else is.
I put a protective shield around myself to protect me from the self-doubt I feel. That shield is pride. The reading from James today is a great mirror for me to examine how pride works in me. James begins by asking an important question, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from?” Hmm. Let me think about what has turned me into a hissing cat in the past week.
James answers the question with another question: “Is it not from your passions that make war within your members?” In other words, James notes that my inclination to be at odds with others comes from my emotions, especially my emotions that protect my sense of self when I am insecure: anger, fear, hurt. Yep. Those emotions are very much present when I feel unsure of myself.
Then James names the deeper emotions beneath the protective ones: covetousness and envy. “You covet but you not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war.”
For a moment I hope that James isn’t talking to me. I haven’t even thought of killing anyone. But I’m reading this scripture in prayer, and so God prompts me to pause and ask myself, “Am I innocent here? While I would do no physical harm to others, in the conversations in my head with people who cause me to feel unsure of myself, do I not beat them down?” Yep. I do. Sooner or later I win every argument I have with someone in my head. And yes, at the core of my interior battles is a wish that I had the position, the authority, the leadership, the power, the attention—the something—that someone else has. I feel my lack. And, in my head at least, I cover it with protective passions that put me at odds with others.
Then James names what goes on in my head and heart: “You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. Adulterers! Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God?”
Adulterer? At enmity with God? That’s strong language, James. Not me. But then prayer causes me to look deeper again. I think about what adultery is: it is making love to someone who is not your spouse. James use of that strong word then makes sense to me: if in struggling, even with evil, I make war by beating down others in those arguments in my head (or through contentious actions)—that is a mental and emotional adultery for me. I am a Christian. I have pledged myself to God, and God overcomes evil with goodness. That is the core of the mystery of the cross.
If I am Christian, if I belong to God, I cannot let self-protective emotions lead me to envy and thoughts in the night which let me pretend to soundly defeat those who cause me to doubt. When I do that, I have fallen victim to pride. I see myself, all by myself, playing the role of the super-hero and defeating whoever the enemy of the day is. I may stay inside my head with my war, or I may let a word of gossip or depreciation slip. I may simply stay away from a person or I may try to best them in another way. I may be very overt in my war. Whatever the external expression, inside I have fallen victim to pride.
But James has a remedy: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So submit yourselves to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
What does “submit” mean here? I think it means to exchange my self-righteous kitten bravado for becoming a psalmist.
The response for the psalm today says this well: “Throw your cares on the Lord, and he will support you.” Submitting to the Lord means I show God my self-protective feelings, the envy beneath them, the pride beneath my envy, and finally the very small kitten self who is vulnerable, weak, and pretending to be a big bad cat. I humbly show God how hard it is for me to believe that overcoming evil with goodness will really work in my life.
James finishes, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you of two minds. Begin to lament, to mourn, to weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.”
It is comforting to know that James wrote this to Christians almost two-thousand years ago. Being a single-minded Christian, committed to Christ in thoughts, words, passions, and insecurities, has always been hard. I am not the only one who struggles.
But I need to “cleanse my hands”—make sure there are no actions that give in to passion and pride. I need to “purify my heart”—pour out my emotions to God until He has cleaned them. I need to set my mind on Jesus and His way.
Jesus in the Gospel today helps me out.
Jesus gives the same message in a gentle way. His disciples were struggling with their own insecurities. As we pick the Gospel of Mark back up from where we left off before Lent (in chapter 9) Jesus is just beginning to name to his disciples that “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him.” They’ve been following Jesus for a while. They didn’t understand what he meant, but “they were afraid to question him.” So insecurity and pride stepped in. They began arguing about who was the greatest.
Jesus knew and claimed a teachable moment. He called the Twelve to come listen. He said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Then he brought a child in and added, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”
At our core, we are all little children (or kittens) when we feel vulnerable. Little children fight and cry about so many things. But then they make up easily. They romp and play as kittens do. Pride forms as we hide our child inside. It protects us. But that protection blocks the openness to God that lets Him see our weakness, our fear, our pride, our sinfulness. Children know that adults are going to intervene when they fight. They accept the discipline and guidance that adults whom they trust give them. The fight ends.
Prayer:
Lord, help the fight to end in me. My kitten self is a survival of the fittest self—not the image of You in my soul. Tame the kitten inside me. Give me the grace to be docile. Make me of a single mind, Your Mind. Let me be a little child and psalmist when I am tempted to protect myself with pride. Let me bring all my feelings, all my thoughts, all my needs to You. Then give me the grace to make me a 100% Christian. Teach me how to overcome ordinary human disagreements and overt evil with Your goodness, Your love. Forgive me and heal me. Give me Gifts of the Spirit to gently, quietly, and deliberately follow You in all Your ways—that the Fruits of the Spirit within me may attract others to You.
Link to Readings: James 4:1-10; from Psalm 53; Mark 9: 30-37
