Lookahead: But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. The problem with arrogance is that it’s the purview of the devil and evil.  The devil is, in reality, the very template for arrogance itself.  When we lapse into arrogant behavior, we are knowingly or unknowingly serving his purposes instead of God’s.  Why would anyone serve the devil? Maybe because they think he’s a humorously sarcastic cartoon character dressed in red with horns and a tail?  Au contraire, the devil is the chief architect of…for example…ISIL atrocities. Some would argue that tragically we’re seeing ISIL atrocities again today, independent of perpetrators. Think about those recent atrocities and how they were architected to create maximum physical, mental, and emotional pain–and fear.  Well, ISIL ilk = the devil in action–that is who he is.

For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. James 4:13-17

You may recognize these verses from my last post.  Prior to starting my next post, I pasted them into my Word Processing API by mistake, instead of new verses from Chapter 5. After researching them for a few days, I suddenly realized, “Oopsie! I covered these in the last post!”  My working plan had been to start the Chapter 5 verses about wealthy people being good stewards of their riches.  Nevertheless, I felt that I had been getting a heavenly “download” on 13-17.   (Note: In my case, “download” equates to…as I research the verses, I encounter various memories, testimonies, sermons, social media content, etc., that come together like a jigsaw puzzle to provide a Word in Season for someone — which is the one of the main drivers for the blog.) 

However on further examination, it occurred to me that, in the last post, I had broken down 16a and 17, but not 16b.  And it seemed that the LORD had been giving me a download on the latter, so I concluded that I needed to stay the course.  Hopefully this will be a Word in Season for someone.  And in sum, for now we’re still camped on 4:13-17 with the “stewarding verses” ostensibly to follow in the next post. 🙂  

nun νῦν Now

de δὲ however

kauchas καυχᾶσθε you boast

en ἐν in

tais ταῖς the

alazoneiais ἀλαζονείαις arrogance

hymōn ὑμῶν of you

pasa πᾶσα All

kauchēsis καύχησις boasting

toiautē τοιαύτη such

ponēra πονηρά evil

estin ἐστιν is

Boasting in the arrogance of you…about what?  “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.”

Boasting about tomorrow in general à la Proverbs 27:1? (Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.)  So the person would have his future all mapped out and be trusting in himself to pull it off according to plan? That is, boasting derives from a person thinking that he has control over the future? And could the boasting also include someone mandating what the plans should be…to God? (which in reality = telling God our plans so that He can have a good laugh?) Yes to all, I believe, but added to this braggadocios spirit is the unspoken assertion that the person, and not God, is the master of their destiny.  

“Arrogance” per STRONGS NT 212: ἀλαζονεία and ἀλαζονία a. in secular writings generally empty, braggart talk sometimes also empty display in act, swagger; b. “an insolent and empty assurance, which trusts in its own power and resources and shamefully despises and violates divine laws and human rights.  c. an impious and empty presumption which trusts in the stability of earthly things…in one’s style of living.

I started thinking about arrogant people, and Jim Woodford popped into my mind.  Why? I had just seen him on TV describing himself as an arrogant man. 🙂  Woodford was a trained pilot in the aviation profession, with an impeccable track record. In his words, extracted from Facebook and a couple of YouTube videos:  “Airline pilots are somewhat guilty of arrogance.  We don’t come by it naturally.  But when you spend your life delivering hundreds of thousands of people safely to their destination, you feel quite good about that and you have to be careful because that sometimes becomes arrogance…(I) became quite successful…I invested my money wisely at the beginning of the tech boom in the 80’s, and I had a good life.  My nickname, by the way, was Diamond Jim…I was very comfortable in life shall we say. Life was good.” 

Woodford’s arrogance subsequently resulted in his death due to playing around with dosage levels of an experimental drug that he was taking for pain management.  One of his video excerpts says, “You don’t really realize how arrogant you are until you are faced with a true…calamity in your life…” Woodford describes what his reaction was after realizing that all the organs in his body were shutting down due to a massive overdose:  “in my arrogance, and, you know, in my ability to fix anything, fly anything, do anything, I thought…everything will be OK.”  

One minor problem–Jim Woodford actually stated, “in my arrogance, and, you know, in my ability to fix anything, fly anything, do anything, I thought, if I could just get over there, and get back in my body, everything will be OK.”   Jim was, in fact, having an out-of-body experience before flying through a tunnel of light on the way to…heaven. 🙂

In heaven, Jim underwent a ginormous reset and was sent back to earth a radically transformed man who, after thirty years, is still totally obsessed with Jesus and overflowing with His love and peace–as if the NDE (Near Death Experience) occurred yesterday.  Like the apostle Paul, the LORD turned Jim into an ambassador for Christ.  But how many people slip off to eternity without that reset?  

Jim’s appearance on TV stirred up a memory about how I had shared his testimony approximately fourteen years ago with a much loved, elderly relative in her sunset years.  I found it endearing that this relative would always use the expression, “If I die” instead of “when I die.”  On one occasion this led to a discussion about the certainty of death and what the afterlife would look like.  I was intrigued to discover that she wasn’t really sure about whether heaven existed or not.  The ironic thing was that she was an observant Christian, active in her church, subscribed to everything in the Apostle’s Creed, and, in her own sweet way, was always trying to serve Jesus.  I encouraged her to have a relationship with Him and tap into everything He had for her.  I further mailed her a copy of the book, Flight to Heaven, about this pilot who had experienced an NDE.  

Naturally I wanted to re-visit the book for this blog.  That’s when I discovered that it had not been written by Woodford!  It was written by another pilot who had experienced an NDE.  He was a younger version of Jim Woodford when his life and the plane he co-piloted crashed and burned.  But it was unusually similar case of self-described arrogance.  

Here’s what pilot #2, Dale Black, had to say about his arrogance level: “After paying my way through college, any time and money I had left I spent taking flying lessons at Brackett Air Service in La Verne.  Looking back, I don’t know how I did it.  The “why” was easy  I wanted everything life had to offer  That meant logging a lot of hours in the classroom, on the playing field, and in the air.¹  What can I say? I was a teenager with testoserone running through my veins.  I as an athlete, playing shortstop for Pasadena College, and an aviator on my way to flying jets.  I was a driven person, particularly at the time in my life. I went to school full time, played baseball, and worked at my family’s business…”² Per YouTube video, Dale was also an arrogant bully:  “I was a sore excuse for a Christian. I was expelled from (a Christian College) told to never come back.”  (Dale was kicked out for essentially bullying (abusive hazing) underclassmen.)

Dale writes that as he hovered above his body in the hospital room, “a clear and powerful memory flashed into my mind.  I was in the fifth grade.  I was a tenderhearted kid who just received Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.  I remember how truly I believed the Bible’s teaching about Jesus being God’s only Son and that He loved me…on the heels of that flashback came a new realization. I was no longer that tenderhearted kid.  I was selfish and arrogant.  A person who loved a lot of things but not the things God loves.  A person who had zeal for a lot of things but not for the things the Lord had zeal for.”³ (my emphasis)

This was an example of someone who started out on the right path of trusting in God, but then slipped into a state of arrogance.  (And it was probably also happening in the body of believers who James was writing to.) On the other hand, Jim Woodford’s account was an example of a man was not a believer–but rather an agnostic who merely cried out to God at the right time.  Nevertheless, he was a victim of subscribing to/adapting a typical worldly arrogance.  

Why would a believer tend toward arrogance and that state of supposed superiority?  I think it’s totally feasible for someone who is experiencing the Glory of God and God’s blessings, and who is trying to optimize their daily relationship with Him, to begin to consider themselves superior to others.  He does make us feel like we’re special, even set apart.  However, to counter this, I believe that God keeps us humble–not by putting us through humiliating defeats in life.  But by…pop quizzes. 🙂 (If interested, please see “Unpacking #2 – Sticky Question #1, Joy in Trials?”)

If someone is a believer and plugged in to the will of God, I don’t think He orchestrates failure or crushingly embarrassing opportunities to humble us and teach us a lesson.  I think He gives us “pop quizzes” and helps us to do self-assessments.  He gave me a pop quiz years ago in an inner city church.  Those were the days when I was going after total immersion in the worship segment of service as I sought–successfully or not–to touch the face of God.  There was a lady who would come late and then interrupt our worship by walking around and enthusiastically greeting everyone.  One time, I whirled on her and said, “Hey, I’m worshipping here!” I then had an over-riding “compulsion” to throw myself on her mercy, and beg her forgiveness, at the earliest opportunity. The hurt look on her face still comes back to me from time to time.  That’s when I began to learn about the role that truth–and love–play in worship.

So is this arrogance the same thing as pride?  Morli-ism:  Arrogance is pride with an attitude.  

The web (Cambridge) defines arrogance as: “the quality of being unpleasantly proud and behaving as if you are more important than, or know more than, other people.” So I guess people can be pleasantly proud? Yes per Psychology Today:  “…pride requires being responsible for an outcome that is valued socially. If you scored a nice goal for your team, for instance, you might feel proud of your accomplishment…Arrogance refers to excessive and overbearing pride. If you are arrogant, then you may believe that scoring that nice goal in the dying minutes of a match means that you have been carrying the team, that your teammates are useless without you, that if it were not for you, your team would have had no chance whatsoever at succeeding. If you are arrogant, you are also more likely to compare everyone’s accomplishment against your (incomparable) accomplishment, constantly reaffirming your own superiority. Your hubris has no bounds.”⁴ (my emphasis)

But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. The problem with arrogance is that it’s the purview of the devil and evil.  The devil is, in reality, the very template for arrogance itself.  When we lapse into arrogant behavior, we are knowingly or unknowingly serving his purposes instead of God’s.  Why would anyone serve the devil? Maybe because they think he’s a humorously sarcastic cartoon character dressed in red with horns and a tail?  Au contraire, the devil is the chief architect of…for example…ISIL atrocities. Some would argue that tragically we’re seeing ISIL atrocities again today, independent of perpetrators. Think about those recent atrocities and how they were architected to create maximum physical, mental, and emotional pain–and fear.  Well, ISIL ilk = the devil in action–that is who he is. And that’s how much he totally detests human beings because of our tripartite design and our primary mission of worshipping our Creator.  These atrocities started happening as soon as Adam and Eve sinned and surrendered their authority to the devil.  So I can’t understand why anyone would worship him and/or seek evil. 

But worldly arrogance may not arise from deliberately teaming with the devil. People who have cemented themselves at the center of their personal universes, may oppose both God and the devil.  They think they’re better than anybody.  I believe that those people need to know that there are two options here, heaven and hell.  There’s no Option 3. And hell is the default, unless we accept God’s gift of life. 

So in the spiritual battle to put down arrogance, what should our end game be? Myself, I’d like to be like the new and improved Dale Black.  He underwent an entire memory wipe, and it was only restored incrementally over the years.  Dale Black had zero memory of the accident (of the plane disintegrating upon hitting a huge memorial mausoleum at 135 mph and himself falling 70 feet to the ground :-)).  In addition, when he first came out of a deep, post-surgical coma, he had no recollection whatsoever of the overwhelming, unconditional LOVE Who is God that had inexorably enveloped him in heaven.  He had bandages and casts all over his body, including one bandage covering his right eye.  The other eye, however, was working fine…and it had become an eye…of LOVE.  Every person that he looked at in the hospital elicited an overwhelming response of love and empathy and compassion from Dale.  He wasn’t mobile, but he would look out the window and see cars on the highway.  And he would weep for the people in the cars who might not make it to heaven. 🙂  He was, you could say, a changed man.  I guess that’s what happens when you “fall into God’s LOVE.” 

“You have to come to the end of yourself before you find the beginning of God.” Jim Woodford

++++++++++++
¹Captain Dale Black, Flight to Heaven (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publisher, 2010), p.21.

²Ibid., p. 20.

³Ibid., p. 31.

⁴https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-new-home/201806/what-is-the-difference-between-pride-and-arrogance