Tuesday, 2/18/14
Today’s reading from the Letter from James opens the
question as to whether or not God intervenes in the course of worldly events to
make things happen. I may be a heretic for saying this, but I think today’s
reading tells us God does not directly intervene. Let’s review what the reading
says.
“No one experiencing
temptation should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’ for God is not subject to
temptation to evil, and he himself tempts no one.”
That tells us only that temptations do not come from God, it
does not say he never intervenes.
The reading goes on to say that the temptations we might see
as coming from God or from the devil actually come from our own nature. “Each person is tempted when lured by his own
desire.”
The reading then says that only “every perfect gift is from
above.” From that, rightly or wrongly, I take it that all that comes from God
are his graces.
I base my understanding of that on Paul’s words from Acts,
17:27-28 “He is not far from any of us, for in him we live and move and have
our being.” God influences all of our acts much as the ocean influences all the
activities of a fish that spends its life swimming around in it.
So, this passage from James has me thinking that God does
not directly cause either good or bad things to happen to us, but he does help
us to accept and deal with whatever happens.
1 comment:
Was not Jesus healing the deaf, the blind and the lame not a direct intervention? Are we to believe that he limited his direct interventions to the 3 years of his public ministry? Why would he limit himself to those three years?
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