There have already been 113 homicides in Jackson this year – 3 just this past weekend. And it’s easy to blame guns on the one hand or insufficient police budgets on the other. But James would have us look deeper, into the root causes of violence. For he reminds us that people fight and kill one another because they want things they don’t have. And most of these desires are greedy or envious, in one way or another focused on satisfying our passions (4:2-3). In other words, our violence problem starts in our hearts.

And such spiritual heart disease manifests itself not only in our actions but in our words. For the same sort of envy and greed spawns the invective spilling from the talking heads on our TVs and too many of our “friends” on Facebook. But when we speak evil of one another, we are also breaking God’s law, which clearly says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves (4:11 – see Matthew 19:19 and Leviticus 19:18). And when we cast God’s law aside in this way, when we say we don’t need to obey it, we are thus sitting in judgment, not only on those human beings we despise, but on God Himself.

And such godless pride reveals itself in even the most casual of ways. For when we make the simplest business or travel plans for the future, James reminds us that we are actually presuming upon God’s providence, pretending that we are somehow in control of our calendars and schedules. Instead, James says we should humble ourselves before God, saying that we will only go to the places and do the things that are in accordance with His will (4:13-15).

And isn’t such humility also the true remedy for all the other problems listed in this chapter? For if we truly humble ourselves before others, how can we go on abusing them in either word or deed? No, if we are truly focused on the needs of others, there won’t be any room in our lives for the pride or the greed or the envy that inspires so much of the violence we see today.

So, let’s be part of the solution to the hatred and violence we see all around us – by living humble lives of love for one another.

James 4:1-17 (ESV)

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”–
14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.