Session B is reported below in green printing. This is the report of two weeks work. Pastor Bill

TRINITY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

IHOP BIBLE STUDY                                                                 
# 3 Sessions A and B James 4: 1 - 18, "Contrasts Between Godliness and Worldliness” – with commentary. The purpose of the Letter of James is to describe, “How We Relate to God and Other Persons."  This is the 3rd lesson of 5 sessions.

According to our Study Chart –

Following the devotions, a brief review was held concerning the topic of “Obedience.” This is the concept of “living in profound engagement” in a task that is meaningful and requires giving up your life (betting your life) in order to achieve it. Often this concept is associated with the military, “Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.” While I’m uncertain about knowing the “reasons why,” I can testify that this is the life that God requires of us; we are to be obedient to living the purpose for which we are intended to live which is to live the humane and gracious life while working for justice and mercy.

Please start with section II.

I.          ABOUT THIS SCRIPTURE

            Read this chapter in one reading.

1.         Vss. 4: 1 – 3, What is it that causes fights among the people? Provide illustrations and be prepared to share!

            (How might this relate to our egos and to our desire for independence from God?)

WS: Our TV ads promote the viewpoint of our egos, “I want what I want and I want it now!”

2.         Vss. 4: 4 – 6, How is “friendship with the world hatred toward God? Please illustrate!

WS: The focal point of the world is the fulfillment of our egos. This is the antithesis of having God as our intended focal point.

            Comments by other IHOPers: Christians are to live IN the world but not to be OF it. Friendship with the world is like sleeping with the enemy and knowing where the camp is. Our Marriage Covenants describe our relationship to God. Hosea 6: 7 defines the breaking of our covenant with God.

            Vs. 5, How is God’s spirit that lives IN US intensely envious?

WS: God is envious of anything that directs our attention away from our intended creation. Just as a cow is a cow because of its “is-ness” so too we humans are created to live the humane and gracious life and this is our “is-ness.”

            Comments by other IHOPers: God’s envy is experienced as God’s grace; tough love.

3.         What is your experience of the following: (Be prepared to share!)

            Vs. 4: 7A, submit your-self to God?

WS: The submission of our egos to God changes the focal point through which we pull all of our life experiences.

            Comments by other IHOPers: Disobedience is to be replaced by obedience. God calls for our surrender.

Material added on Tuesday, December 9^th.

            Vs. 4: 7B, resist the devil – keep this Gut Trip; How do you experience the devil?

WS: The world is a-moral; it is Just The Way Life Is (TWLI). When we experience pain of any kind, the pain is not out to get us just to be mean; pain is just TWLI. Pain never lies to us; it is part of our reality. Part of our problem is that our ideas of what is involved in our lives is too small; i.e., we get the idea that so much of life is not meaningful, especially those things that we experience as harmful. While such things are uncomfortable, they are not without meaning.

       Evil is the Big Lie that the world is out to victimize us. The world is unable to intentionally do this. When we believe we are victims then we are under the influence of Evil. The demonstration of the Christ is that we have a choice, that while victimized by the world, we can live either as victims or as victors. The choice is ours! The topic of evil always creates the most controversy in our Salina IHOP Bible Study sessions. Like most people we want to believe that evil is a separate power under which we can be its victim. However, the truth is there is nothing in nature that is out to get us. Certainly, people can do things that are the antithesis of At-One-Ment, but these things in and of themselves contain their own morality; people decide things to be hurtful, but the things themselves are valueless. Take rat poison for instance. The rat poison is a’moral; it is just a powerful powder that can kill us or be useful in regulating our heart beats.

       However, to become convinced that such powers exist is to come under the spell of evil; evil is a big lie. To believe it, that is to surrender to it, is—in fact—the events we experience as evil.

       Concerning people who want to do us in, it is affirmed that there is no need to allow any event of Anti-At-0ne-ment to go unpunished. Most of the time the reward for such deeds have its reward built in. However, such people sometimes need to be awakened to this reward, which is why we put people into jail, or they get a ticket for speeding, etc. 

            Vs. 4: 8 – 10, Review James suggestions and explain how this can be relevant.

WS: “Come near to God and God will near to you:” All we need to do is awaken to the experience that God never left us.  We know when we “leave God” because the burdens of life become unbearable to us; always this is the first sign of our disobedience. When we feel in synch, or in harmony, with neighbor, self and God who is experienced as Perfect At-One-Ment, then we know that we are near to God.

            “Wash hands:” In order for us to awaken to the nearness of God, one tool to use is a cold bath representing baptism during which we die to our egos or to our “selves” in order that our “selves” can be filled with God who never left us in the first place.

            The “Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary” notes the following: This injunction “refers to ritual washing, and it is ethically interpreted in Isa. 1: 16 – 17 to mean changing from evil deeds to good and justice. “Clean hands and a pure heart” are combined in Ps. 24:4 as the prerequisite for approaching God.  (Interpreters One-Volume Commentary, p. 921.)

            “Purify your hearts:” Notice that the requirement is not to purify our “Heads,” which would be a Head Trip. Rather, we are to purify our “Hearts,” which makes this a Gut Trip. The way to purify anything is to pull it through the focal point of the cross; simply ask WWJD.

            Vs. 9, “Change your laughter and joy to gloom and mourning:” “To the author repentance means that worldly pleasure and wickedness must be rejected and the Christian must mortify himself [sic] so that his laughter turns to mourning and his joy to dejection. These disciplines, however, are not ends in themselves; for God exalts those who thus humble themselves (vs. 10, cf. vs. 6).    (Interpreters One-Volume Commentary, pp. 921 - 122.) This passage raised a lot of questions about the intentions of the author. Why change being happy for being gloomy? One IHOPers observed the business the author writes about as being “double minded.” As Christians we often get caught up in dirty or racially motivated jokes; we laugh at them although we are called upon to question the appropriate-ness of them. We were reminded that Christians are those who dedicate every joy to be pulled through our relationship with Christ. Along this same line, St. Francis put ashes from the fireplace on his food so as to remind him that the taste of the food not distract him from his relationship with Christ. Christians are not to get caught up in other commitments. 

            Vs. 10 “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up:” My experience of the word “humble” often begins in “humiliation.” It is when I am humiliated (as I often am), that I’m awakened to the necessity of living humbly. In other words, humiliation is the experience of denying my intended creation. It is when I am fulfilling my intended creation that I experience being “lifted up by God.”

            Another experience of this is glorification. Gut Trip Analysis defines glorification as the surrendering of all that we are, the Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, to be used for God’s purposes. In other ways, God gets all of me. When I fail to do this (and I often fail) it is then I experience remorse and anger at my self; in other words, I fail to apply to myself God’s love and forgiveness that comes even in my failures. It is when I finally came to this conclusion that I “hear” God’s exclamation, “Well Salmon, it’s about time I got all of you!” Glorification is one form of complete surrender. Remember, there are three doctrines that describe repentance: Justification is the event that awakens me to live obediently; sanctification is my decision to embrace the awakened life; and glorification is my decision to surrender everything I am and have into God’s care. This is a whole lot like jumping into an eternally deep pit, continuously falling out of control, only to be sustained by God’s grace. 

Part B will start here next week!

4.         Vs. 4: 15, Define your experience of The Lord’s Will.

WS: Leslie Weatherhead always is helpful when talking about God’s Will. In his little 86 paged book written in 1944, he notes the three wills of God: God’s Intentional Will, God’s Circumstantial Will, and God’s Ultimate Will. We’ll talk more about these next week. Pull out Weatherheads’s book, “The Will of God,” and read it before next week. The other two books helpful in appreciating The Will of God is, Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), and Rabbi Kushner’s book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1970’s?). Both of these books seek to identify what it is that enables us to be in relationship with others, self and God. Frankl’s approach deals directly with the logos which he identifies as “meaning.” After WWII, and his survival in the Nazi prison camps, he founded the Institute of Logopedics in Wichita, KS.  

            Vs. 4: 17, How does James define sin, and how is this a relevant approach?

WS: This maybe one of the most famous lines from the letter of James. When our deeds are aimed at At-One-Ment, then this is no mistaking that Good is intended.

            I’d like to add that doing Good is not only doing good but also included being Good.

            Plato tells us about the dialogue between Socrates and The Sophists. The Sophists affirmed that The Good was the ultimate purpose of life. Socrates embraced Truth as the ultimate purpose, and Socrates won. Ever since then, the world has been on a search for The Truth which has led us to the development of science, taken us to the moon, and given the world a high quality life.

            However, Gut Trip Analysis embraces the notion that The Sophists were right. It is Goodness that gives a heart to the Tin Man of science. Isn’t this what Jesus, as the Christ, embraced?

       One of the IHOPers mentioned the structure of sin as both the sins of omission and those of commission.

II.      Reflect on the following:  (GETTING THE BIG PICTURE) **

             Part 2 is an exercise in reflecting on the assigned reading through a method of identifying the "Deep Problem" faced by the early church. Sometimes this is known as identifying the underlying contradiction. This is usually hidden behind some particular manifestations. Paul usually addresses this hidden agenda in his "solution" that he offers. Consequently, it is necessary for us to examine his solutions, and then back up to reflect on what is the deeper problem actually being addressed. Usually, this reveals some new insights.

A.         What is the SURFACE PROBLEM that is manifested? 

At this point, use your intuition to identify the surface problem? USE YOUR INTUITIONS.

       Check out Vss. 4: 1 – 4, 7 – 10, and 13 – 14, 16

WS: The following creates church divisions--

Vs. 1 – 4, quarrels and the adulterous life: the life selfishly lived;

Vs. 1, notes the conflicts in the early church during which people were hurt and angered.

Vs. 7 – 10, living the unsurrendered life to God: disobedient in attempting to live free from God, which ultimately is impossible;

Vs. 13 – 14, mercenary: seeking to get our worth from worldly things;

Vs. 16, boasting and bragging: pulling life through their egos.

C.        IDENTIFY THE DEEPER UNDERLYING CONTRADICTION facing the Early  Church. What is the DEEPER, MORE HIDDEN, agenda that James seeks to             address with his solution?

            Use your intuitions to identify the deeper problem.

            At this point, use your intuition to identify deeper, underlying, problem. USE           YOUR INTUITIONS.

Check out Vss. 4: 4 – 6

WS: Making our focal point the world instead of with God. This develops too much pride and a too little humility. Worldly temptation.

WHICH OF THE FOUR MASTER PROBLEMS DOES THIS ISSUE REPRESENT? **

__ False Teachings     _X_ Moral Decay  _XX_The Corrupt World  __  Church Division

B.       What is the SOLUTION James offers to address the Deep Problem? Speculate on   what James is suggesting for the solution.

At this point, use your intuition to identify Paul’s solution.  USE YOUR INTUITIONS.

Check out Vss. 4: 7 -11, 12, 16 – 17

WS: The solution is to change our focal point through which we pull our significance from the world to God. We need to be right with God.

            If I was walking down the street and saw someone “right with God,” what would I be seeing? A couple of the IHOP answers were that we’d see someone living in at-one-ment with their neighbors, self and God as the meaningfulness of life.    Another responded that we be responding as we should.This answer bothers me a bit because of the imperative nature of this phrase. Christians are called up to respond as we a created to live in the image of God (the “Imago Dei.”

WHICH OF THE THREE MASTER SOLUTIONS DOES THIS ISSUE REPRESENT?

__Create Authentic Ministry  XX_Use Spiritual Weapons  __ Utilize Consciousness Raising

Now, reread Paul's solution to see if it makes sense.  

          Alright folks, talk to me! 

** Use the "Problems and Solutions" chart previously sent to you. This chart is available in the archived materials at www.triumc.org/web1/biblestudy. Look for the Chart link.  WES