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| CONFLICTS OF RICH AND POOR |
| A different kind of class struggle. |
| God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. 4:6 |
| Our society tends to divide the rich and the poor. The two groups have little daily contact, and you would have a very hard time communicating a single message to both the very rich and the very poor. Yet it seems James' original readers included both those groups. In one paragraph James addresses the haughty, privileged people of wealth, and in the next paragraph he turns to poor people undergoing severe trials. (Note the shift between 5:1 and 5:7.) The two groups had different problems. The wealthy were selfish. They showed insensitivity and snobbishness to the poor. For their part, the poor responded with envy and grumbling. They blamed God for their poverty. Who Is Double-Minded? James gave advice on the specific problems of each group, but he also implied they have much in common. For both rich and poor the most important struggle is not outside - the conditions we live in - but rather inside. All of us experience the inner conflict of being pulled by powerful, contrary forces. Will we move toward Christ and the life he taught, or in the opposite direction? Will we trust God or reject him? James coined a new word to describe this inner conflict: he called it being "double-minded" (4:8). For rich and poor, this conflict may express itself in different ways, as James went on to explain. But double-mindedness is a tug-of-war between divided loyalties. The essential struggle to obey God is not different for either group. As he discussed the rich and the poor, James relied on many of the actual phrases Jesus had used, especially in the |