E14” Why We Defend What Destroys Us: Ethan’s Thorns - James 1”

Explore discipline using faith and philosophy as presented in this third episode of a four-part series on James chapter 1. Discover how faith, hope, and philosophy blend to help us navigate adversity.  Dive deep into discipline, historical context, and practical spiritual insights to stand strong in life’s storms. Perfect for seekers of faith, healing, and spiritual growth.

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Episode 14 of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  
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Chapters

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is where believers and skeptics alike are invited to embark on a journey of faith, philosophy, and life from a different perspective. Whether we are joined by an insightful guest or we just jump into the deep end, this exploration promises to challenge us all. Are we getting it right? This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. We're in the middle of a series on good religion from James chapter one. It's the only place in the Bible that uses the word religion in a positive context. And today we're going to be talking about discipline. We have established that James drew from Stoicism and used the four virtues of courage, wisdom, discipline, and justice to lay out his first part of his letter that we call James chapter one. So I do want to briefly address the Marcus Aurelius connection, because you can't bring up Stoicism without bringing up Marcus Aurelius or even Seneca. And you may be wondering if you're a stoic, was James a contemporary with either one of those guys? No, he wasn't. He predates both of them. However, I do want to say that Marcus Aurelius being the emperor of Rome, that in his writings, from his perspective, it seems to read more aristocratic and elite. James in his writings, from his perspective, his viewpoint seems much more practical in dealing with life's adversities. But as I've said before, James chapter one isn't about stoicism, but rather a philosophical template integrated with faith that creates this powerful combination that James refers to as good religion, a good religion that gives us the tools we need that serves us as we're going through adversity. So just a brief recap. Who is James? James is the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem, the very first church, the ground zero for Christianity. And he is writing in response to what's referred to as the dispersion. It is people that are strangers in a strange land that's running from genocide. And they're going through immense amounts of adversity and suffering. And this letter is meant to help them get the best possible outcome they can in that adversity. In episode one, we talked about courage, which comes from verses two through four. This also speaks to the compass that we refer to often, and this is East. East is suffering in things we can't control, but seeing them as having purpose, that God uses that to redefine us. And because we push in with courage that we derive from our faith, it grows us, matures us, and prepares us not just for that storm, but future storms. It defines us through our courage. Now in episode two, which comes from verses five through eight, we talked about wisdom, which represents West on our compass, suffering in things you can't control, but there is no higher purpose. You just have to navigate through it. And James says to use wisdom. If East represents the spiritual aspect, then West represents the science aspect. Now, we had said in this episode that you can't just use East all the time. You'll just spin in the circle. And the same can be said for just using West. You'll spin in a circle, that you have to use all of the compass in order to navigate life through this adversity. Now, if I'm being completely honest with myself, as I look back in my life, I remember some of my choices and decisions I've made with less than ideal wisdom and how it impacted my life and how it changed the course. And I have such regret around those decisions and those choices. Sometimes that guilt that we carry for those choices and decisions we made, we cripple ourselves and we can't seem to move forward and get to a better place. That we live in constant regret. And sometimes that guilt that we carry with us from the past sabotages our current choices and decisions. And I think this is something we all need to hear. That no matter where you're from or where you're going, learning new skill sets, growing as a human, and putting together a better life from here is what life is about. We've all made decisions. We've all made choices that we regret. So in this episode, we're going to be dealing with discipline. This is verses 9 through 20. And this deals with North and South on the compass. This is suffering in things that we can control. Now, as we get deeper into this episode, what I don't want you to do is hear it through the lens of regret from our poor choices or decisions that have kind of put us where we're at. But rather, I want you to hear it through the lens of hope, of what's possible through making better choices and decisions with these tools that James has given us. Now, in James chapter one, verses nine through 20 deals with discipline. In this section, it deals with what we talk about on our compass, North and South. North representing our emotions, our wants, our needs, our fears, our desires, and that emotions want immediate gratification. Now, the polar opposite of that is south, and that is discipline, choosing to do hard things now so you get to a better place later. Now keep in mind as we go through these things, this is about our journey. We always think of life as being static, kind of happening to us, and we stay in one place. But the truth is, is we navigate through life. It is truly a journey. And these are the tools that help us make better decisions, better choices, and things that we can control so we can get to a better place later. Now, the first thing James warns us about is money. And I don't want you to hear, oh yeah, all money is bad. It's an all or nothing thing, because it isn't that at all. It's presented more as a resource. And it has more to do with misprioritizing money and making it the main thing instead of where it should be prioritized. Now we got to keep in mind context who he's writing to. He's writing to people that are going through difficult situations, a lot of adversity and a lot of suffering. And when you're going through things like that and you don't have a lot and you're a stranger in a strange land, it would make sense that by gaining a tremendous amount of resource like money, that you could circumvent a lot of this suffering and this adversity. But what James is saying is when you take that resource, because that's all it is, is a resource, and you prioritize it above everything else, then other things will have to be sacrificed. And when you do this, you change your direction, your path, your journey, and you end up at a different destination when you actually get there. It may be very cold and desolate without the beautiful things in life. He's not saying don't prioritize it. He's not saying don't put it in its proper place. But when you make it the number one priority that other things have to be sacrificed for, you're making it your God. So that's the first thing he talks about. Now, the second thing he talks about, and he uses this word parasmos. Now, in the first episode, we talked about finding courage. We use the word parasmos, and then we said it was used in a positive context. It means testings, trials, tribulations, I mean suffering, but in a positive way, it leads to good things. Now, in this context, parasmos is used in a negative context. It means temptation. And he says that God doesn't tempt us, that it's our own lust and our own desires that draw us off our path. I mean, this is archetypal. This is the siren's song that seduces the sailors as they're on their path to change the direction of their vessel and head towards unknowingly these rocks being seduced by this song, and then they crash and they're wrecked, stranded on the rocks, rather than getting to their destination. I really like the way Jesus presents it as thorns, and I've used this before. But where I live, we have what we call blackberry picking. And when it gets colder about this time of the year, we go out and collect blackberries from what we call briars. These blackberries grow on briars, and briars are a thorning vine that their thorns grow back towards their roots. So as you go in to get the berry and you try to pull out, they kind of grab you and they don't let you out. They're painful. You have to go with a partner so you can get out of the blackberries. But it's kind of the same thing. We're seduced by the berry. And as we go further into it, it gets worse and worse until we get trapped, and now we're stuck, and we can't get back to our path or our journey, and we never reach our destination. Now, all of us have blackberries in our life that seduce us, that we all want that if we're not careful, we'll find ourselves stuck in the thorns and not able to get to where we need to be. So no matter what the blackberry represents for you, it all has the same outcome if we're not careful. I want to give you a real-world example of somebody that went through this, a friend of mine. His name is Ethan. And Ethan aspired to be a sports announcer, a commentator. And he was actually very good at it. He had a great voice, he had great instincts for it, good insight, and he could have been very successful. He was young, he was newly married with a baby. So he has a lot on his shoulders. There's a lot going on. I mean, what is it they say? That if the path is wide open and easy, it's not the path. The journey puts us right through adversity. That's where we're grown, that's where we propel. And that's definitely where Ethan was at. But like all of us, as we're going through these stresses in life, how we choose to deal with them in north and south, our emotions versus discipline, we have to be very careful, or we'll become shipwrecked or end up in the thorns. Now, for Ethan, the berry that kind of seduced him was alcohol. Now, I'm not trying to paint alcohol as the big bad evil, but it's a fact for Ethan, it was his blackberry. And what he found early on by choosing alcohol, that it gave immediate relief to the stresses that comes from the adversity of life. And we said emotions want immediate gratification. So this was producing the things that he enjoyed. It was just instant relief. But what happened was without discipline in the check, he kept going into the thorns to get this Blackberry and he wandered in deeper and deeper. Now, as he did this, it started causing more and more strain on his relationship with his wife and also on his career. However, by the time that Ethan realized the problems it was causing, I mean how significant they were, it was too late. Ethan was stuck in the thorns. And now Ethan watched as his career kind of floated on down the path, started realizing that his wife wasn't going to stay with him in these thorns. She had a life to live too, and she had to move on down her path on the road. So now Ethan in the Thorns is watching as his life just continues on without him, and he is left now without his career and without his wife and his child estranged from him. Now, when Ethan would have friends and he would complain about what was going on, all of his friends pointed out the same thing. Ethan, do you not realize it's the alcohol? But Ethan would defend the alcohol. He would defend this behavior and he would push these people out of his life that would continuously point at the alcohol, defending it. But it's so strange that when we get caught in the thorns, we defend the thorns so we can still have this thing we need, which has become kind of our God. And anybody that wants to attack our God, we push them out of our life because we aren't wanting to get back to our path. We want our path to come to us. That's our frustration. We want all of it. And that's just not going to happen. Well, this continued on and on until Ethan's finances, Ethan's health just took such a toll. And we're talking days that's turned into weeks, that's turned into years, that's now kind of turned into a lifetime. And Ethan started having some health issues, which looked to be pretty basic. It was a gallbladder issue, and he went in to have a surgery to have it removed. But going through the procedures and doing all of the checks, the surgeon told Ethan, Ethan, we can't do the surgery. You won't make it through it. It's not just your gallbladder, you're having organ failure. So they sent Ethan home with a bunch of pills and told him, You have to stop drinking immediately. So in a great deal of pain by himself, Ethan now has to face this God. I called Ethan and I spoke to him. He said, I'm watching old videotapes back when I used to announce. He said, Chris, listen, I've quit drinking. I'm done. I've realized what it's cost me, and it's cost me everything. I'm sober now, I won't drink another drop. And we talked, and I encouraged Ethan. But the next day I got a call that Ethan had died. It was too late, he was too far gone. And I realized in Ethan's last moments, what he was doing is he was looking back and reflecting on where he was when he went off the path and he got stuck in the thorns of what his life could have been. But because he didn't use discipline and choose better, it didn't happen. He ended off the path and going to the wrong place and getting stuck. James says through this that if we allow our lust to conceive and give birth to that behavior, that behavior, once it becomes full grown, it will bring death. It doesn't mean just physical death. Like Ethan, his wife, his relationship with his child, his health, his career, his finances, everything good in this life was taken from him by his own choices and decisions. So James is saying that by managing our emotions and choosing discipline in those difficult times and using wisdom, we can get to a better place. Now, for some of us, if we're already off in the thorns and we relate more to Ethan, it should be heard as hope. And that if we choose correctly and we apply these tools, James is saying, we can get back to our path. It doesn't mean we can get back everything we've lost, but we can get to a much better place through hope and pushing in with discipline. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, and or concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.