You can find at least three types of people. The first group is unmotivated and unambitious people. They are not raising money for start ups and they would be terrible in your college recruitment department, “Come join our college and we will make you, slightly below average.”
The second group has the ambition. They are eager for knowledge and success, but their whole enterprise is fueld by the wisdom from below, the kind that is earthly, sensual, envious, bitter, devilish, and riddled with strife. It is full of the pushing and pulling that marks much of the American entreprenurial spirit and the men who abide by this wisdom go home needing a whiskey, or porn, or some bit of indecent entertainment to take the edge off of their work day.
The third group is what we are aiming for and it involves the people who live by the wisdom from above. James says that this wisdom is “ first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 1:17).
The trouble is, if we are honest, we would put most of those qualities in the first group, the unproductive one. We say to God, “We’ve got two roads, Lord, which would you like us to take? We can be mediocre, a bit on the lazy side, while being pure, peaceable, gentle, and easily intreatable. Or, we can get into the fight. We know how to hustle, but you have to understand, that we will show the competition no mercy, and gentle, well, that really won’t be in the equation.”
Those who talk that way are missing what it means to live by that wisdom which comes from above. “Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you?” James asks, “let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom” (James 3:13).
You say, “Look, that is impossible.” Well, it is not impossible. But it does require getting the wisdom that comes from above, where Christ has ascended.
Jared Longshore – May 12, 2024
