If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.
James 3:13-18

Dear God, this is a great passage, and the whole thing is worth digging into, but I want to pause on a phrase towards the beginning: “the humility that comes from wisdom.” Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. I’ve seen very foolish older people. it doesn’t necessarily come from experience. No, I think there are two other ingredients that are part of the recipe: suffering through trials and responding to the suffering by truly submitting to you.

There’s a reason that 12-step programs include submitting to a higher power. It goes back to the stages of faith I read about in the Communicators Commentary on Job. I don’t have in front of me the author of these six levels of faith, but here they are:

1. Intuitive – projective faith: is associated with the child’s faith, based upon fantasy and imagination

2. Mythical-literal faith: is the family faith of the early school years, which is sustained by moral rules and either/or thinking

3. Synthetic – conventional faith: as an adolescent phase that conforms to the tradition of the community and creates the “kind” of person of faith it models or rejects

4. Individuative – reflective faith: is the faith of the young adult who is capable of critical thinking, independent reflection, and dialectical reasoning

5. Conjunctive faith: is a mid-life and old-age faith that integrates self-identity with a comprehensive world of you to see the order, coherence, and meaning of life in order to serve and be served

6. Universalizing faith: is the rare faith of the world citizen who incarnates a transcendent vision into a disciplined, active, and self-giving life. –Page 21

The wisest people I know reach the phase that Job eventually reached and the apostle Paul reached pretty quickly. The last phase when they submit their will to the idea that life is not about them. Freedom and peace are found in our decision to fully embrace your path for our lives regardless of what it means for our level of comfort. The widow who gave her to coins in front of Jesus likely lived an entire life of poverty, and you used her to teach us for thousands of years. John the Baptist lost his head, but you have used him. Jesus went through torture and lost his life for us. Paul went through prison and death, but he considered his life worth nothing to him. And James speaks of it here.

Father, these are easy words to say and difficult words to live. Help my life to be more of a reflection of these words, not for my sake but for your glory.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen