James 1:1-4 – Real Family
James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad:
Greetings.
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
After several years away, my wife and I are reentering the ministry of foster care. We are doing so more wisely this time. In one respect, in our mid-40s, we have less expectation of using this as a means to claim an infant as "ours" through the eventual adoption process. We simply, sincerely, by the grace of God, both want to help where we can.
We are wiser in another respect because God has provided us with counselors among whom Proverbs says there is safety. One of those is Kelly with Crossnore, the agency that is the conduit of personal grace between us and the at times lumbering bureaucracy of social services which left some bruises on our spirits last time. Kelly and Crossnore are so committed to individualizing the process that she is coming to our home to provide training because the site they use for group equipping is not accessible for my wheelchair.
Yesterday Kelly talked about the bonding process. With my Masters degree and counseling experience as well as our previous exposure to foster care, it was tempting to check out in all but the politely compliant sense that would check the right boxes for us to proceed. The Lord had other plans as He found or made soft spot in my sometimes jaded heart.
The preparation of Kelly's curriculum often involves thinking through fictional scenarios very much like the ones we will face in the ministry we are undertaking. I can appreciate that. These sessions provide purposeful pauses for perspective that real-time, emotionally loaded interactions with real people do not. In one of them, she talked about a child who was placed in foster care and almost immediately called the foster parents Mom and Dad.
Kelly explained that this can be an instant adhesive, and one fraught with misunderstanding. Foster parents with jagged places in our hearts from previous experiences, especially attempts to parent, can be tempted to thank God for instantly moving a new family through the minefield of attachment. We can, Kelly warned, hear what we want to hear in the familial label. It, and the child from whom it comes, can serve as a balm to our wounds.
Meanwhile, Kelly backs up to have us consider, the child is using the labels and the roles she knows, rearranging the simple mental furniture she has to orient herself to the new situation. These people are providing things and emotions that Mom and Dad provide, so that's what I'll call them, she thinks, though perhaps not aware of that specifically. If she sees that these labels are extremely pleasing to the new people in her life, the payoff is reinforced.
She may be encouraged, again often not specifically, to let these new parental figures know they have won a competition for her heart she isn't aware is going on. She may decide it's better to talk about her biological parents less in order to please these new parental providers more. In so doing, an opportunity for real, gradual attachment through honest conversations over what she remembers or misses about the family she can from may be lost or delayed.
I think, then, about the opening of James's epistle in the Bible. In a sense, he is orienting himself to a new family, this one a forever family of Christians that really is even more important than his biological parentage. His opening in this is both beautiful and stark, as in James 1:1 the biological half-brother of Jesus immediately gives up whatever deference this intimacy might earn him. He says to the Jesus followers whom he is writing that he is Christ's slave. Toward Christ, he identifies with the worshipful, submitted attitude he would have them show.
As James's attitude works its way outward, then, he calls his fellow Christians brethren in James 1:2. Having been fostered a few times ourselves by people who would use a family label prematurely or for their own purposes, we are justifiably wary.
Does James adopted the word brother because it's socially common, as it still is among many Christians? Does he, perhaps, use that word because he is trying to soften some of the more pointed behavior-shaping in which he is about to engage? We are wise, like foster parents, to consider the meaning of the family label.
If James has not earned enough attachment from us or from his initial readers for us to call him brother, we in good faith proceed to the next aspects of what he has to say, which is to consider it joy when we encounter trials. Perhaps this is the voice of experience? Perhaps even the genetic brother of Jesus, like us, has to encounter trials? Perhaps even somebody in Christ's inner circle, whose sayings throughout his epistle seem shaped by Christ's word choices, perhaps even he has to consider and reconsider, calculate, gain purposeful perspective on how to process life's hurts?
There's real kinship in that, isn't there? Brotherhood, James seems to offer, bonding, comes from common experiences. What we don't feel at first whether we are quick to label or slow to label, develops over time as we realize the strengths, weaknesses, and quirks we share.
The meaning of both our closest and newest relationships is fleshed out as we confess difficulties, and difficulties dealing with difficulties. Therein, we find out what brother, and mother, and father,, and son, and daughter, and mentor, and spiritual leader really mean in accumulated intimacy.
And what's the James 1:3-4 result of a healthy subtlety as we wait for the bonds of relationships to define themselves in daily experience? Patience, says the forthright James for whom from the tone of his letter from here I suspect patience doesn't come easily. Act toward, James seems to both challenge and invite, those in relationship with us through a recognition that they suffer and mature, and the patience which may start as an overmatched kernel within us actually begins to define us.
Let, he assures, those initial brusque reactions to people and the troubles they bring go, let kinship grow, and it grows PERFECT. As your friendly neighborhood counselor who wants to encourage and also might make an idol out of getting people to like him as quickly as possible, I'll look at the acorn in your life, see the oak tree, and dwell on the oak tree's perfection perhaps without being honest about the difficulty of developing roots and surviving winters. James is not that guy. If he says your and our patience is going to be perfect, he means it.
If we know, then, the Lord who has been so patient is about patience perfection in us, perhaps we can abide with human relationships as they progress in fits and starts with a little more grace, a little more bemusement, and a little less haste to label and to make the most of how others label us. Assured by Christ Himself that in Him we gain a kinship network both vast and fulfilling, we need not be too quick to cast hurried and ill-fitting roles we think we need in our current circumstances. Biblically, people are more than extras in our play.
To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad:
Greetings.
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
After several years away, my wife and I are reentering the ministry of foster care. We are doing so more wisely this time. In one respect, in our mid-40s, we have less expectation of using this as a means to claim an infant as "ours" through the eventual adoption process. We simply, sincerely, by the grace of God, both want to help where we can.
We are wiser in another respect because God has provided us with counselors among whom Proverbs says there is safety. One of those is Kelly with Crossnore, the agency that is the conduit of personal grace between us and the at times lumbering bureaucracy of social services which left some bruises on our spirits last time. Kelly and Crossnore are so committed to individualizing the process that she is coming to our home to provide training because the site they use for group equipping is not accessible for my wheelchair.
Yesterday Kelly talked about the bonding process. With my Masters degree and counseling experience as well as our previous exposure to foster care, it was tempting to check out in all but the politely compliant sense that would check the right boxes for us to proceed. The Lord had other plans as He found or made soft spot in my sometimes jaded heart.
The preparation of Kelly's curriculum often involves thinking through fictional scenarios very much like the ones we will face in the ministry we are undertaking. I can appreciate that. These sessions provide purposeful pauses for perspective that real-time, emotionally loaded interactions with real people do not. In one of them, she talked about a child who was placed in foster care and almost immediately called the foster parents Mom and Dad.
Kelly explained that this can be an instant adhesive, and one fraught with misunderstanding. Foster parents with jagged places in our hearts from previous experiences, especially attempts to parent, can be tempted to thank God for instantly moving a new family through the minefield of attachment. We can, Kelly warned, hear what we want to hear in the familial label. It, and the child from whom it comes, can serve as a balm to our wounds.
Meanwhile, Kelly backs up to have us consider, the child is using the labels and the roles she knows, rearranging the simple mental furniture she has to orient herself to the new situation. These people are providing things and emotions that Mom and Dad provide, so that's what I'll call them, she thinks, though perhaps not aware of that specifically. If she sees that these labels are extremely pleasing to the new people in her life, the payoff is reinforced.
She may be encouraged, again often not specifically, to let these new parental figures know they have won a competition for her heart she isn't aware is going on. She may decide it's better to talk about her biological parents less in order to please these new parental providers more. In so doing, an opportunity for real, gradual attachment through honest conversations over what she remembers or misses about the family she can from may be lost or delayed.
I think, then, about the opening of James's epistle in the Bible. In a sense, he is orienting himself to a new family, this one a forever family of Christians that really is even more important than his biological parentage. His opening in this is both beautiful and stark, as in James 1:1 the biological half-brother of Jesus immediately gives up whatever deference this intimacy might earn him. He says to the Jesus followers whom he is writing that he is Christ's slave. Toward Christ, he identifies with the worshipful, submitted attitude he would have them show.
As James's attitude works its way outward, then, he calls his fellow Christians brethren in James 1:2. Having been fostered a few times ourselves by people who would use a family label prematurely or for their own purposes, we are justifiably wary.
Does James adopted the word brother because it's socially common, as it still is among many Christians? Does he, perhaps, use that word because he is trying to soften some of the more pointed behavior-shaping in which he is about to engage? We are wise, like foster parents, to consider the meaning of the family label.
If James has not earned enough attachment from us or from his initial readers for us to call him brother, we in good faith proceed to the next aspects of what he has to say, which is to consider it joy when we encounter trials. Perhaps this is the voice of experience? Perhaps even the genetic brother of Jesus, like us, has to encounter trials? Perhaps even somebody in Christ's inner circle, whose sayings throughout his epistle seem shaped by Christ's word choices, perhaps even he has to consider and reconsider, calculate, gain purposeful perspective on how to process life's hurts?
There's real kinship in that, isn't there? Brotherhood, James seems to offer, bonding, comes from common experiences. What we don't feel at first whether we are quick to label or slow to label, develops over time as we realize the strengths, weaknesses, and quirks we share.
The meaning of both our closest and newest relationships is fleshed out as we confess difficulties, and difficulties dealing with difficulties. Therein, we find out what brother, and mother, and father,, and son, and daughter, and mentor, and spiritual leader really mean in accumulated intimacy.
And what's the James 1:3-4 result of a healthy subtlety as we wait for the bonds of relationships to define themselves in daily experience? Patience, says the forthright James for whom from the tone of his letter from here I suspect patience doesn't come easily. Act toward, James seems to both challenge and invite, those in relationship with us through a recognition that they suffer and mature, and the patience which may start as an overmatched kernel within us actually begins to define us.
Let, he assures, those initial brusque reactions to people and the troubles they bring go, let kinship grow, and it grows PERFECT. As your friendly neighborhood counselor who wants to encourage and also might make an idol out of getting people to like him as quickly as possible, I'll look at the acorn in your life, see the oak tree, and dwell on the oak tree's perfection perhaps without being honest about the difficulty of developing roots and surviving winters. James is not that guy. If he says your and our patience is going to be perfect, he means it.
If we know, then, the Lord who has been so patient is about patience perfection in us, perhaps we can abide with human relationships as they progress in fits and starts with a little more grace, a little more bemusement, and a little less haste to label and to make the most of how others label us. Assured by Christ Himself that in Him we gain a kinship network both vast and fulfilling, we need not be too quick to cast hurried and ill-fitting roles we think we need in our current circumstances. Biblically, people are more than extras in our play.
Comments
Post a Comment