Wednesday Bible Study: Satan's four-step plan

I have been in a quandary how to approach our next verse, James 3:16, until Sunday morning I saw this on FB:

And I really think this is the point that James is trying to make here.  Let me give you our verse, with a little context:

Jas 3:13  Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 
Jas 3:14  But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 
Jas 3:15  This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 
Jas 3:16  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 
Jas 3:17  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 

Now, you might not immediately see the connection, but if I flip over to my handy KJV+ for the original words, we'll get my drift.  In fact, I actually did a "loose translation" myself, to help me see what was going on, and it ran like this:

"Reason being, at whichever spot (you find) hot, fervent emotion and provocation, thither (also) instability and all foul affairs."

So this verse is a "where you find one, you'll find the other" construction.  I know, thanks Captain Obvious, but the question is just what are the "ones" and the "others".  At the point where ESV puts jealousy, the literal translation would be, "zeal".  Scratching your head?  Well the word for each is the same Greek word, and the translation is a bit foggy;

properly heat, that is, (figuratively) “zeal” (in a favorable sense, ardor; in an unfavorable one, jealousy, as of a husband [figuratively of God], or an enemy, malice): - emulation, envy (-ing), fervent mind, indignation, jealousy, zeal.

But if you scroll back to the context verse 14, you see James attach the word "bitter" to it.  So what we are talking about here is the negative version- in other words, zeal in a bad way, emotions without reason, as Sowell said so well. (See what I did there?)  Other versions use envy here, and I shamefully admit I had to look up "emulation":

"effort to match or surpass a person or achievement, typically by imitation."

Now that we have effectively described social media in this one verse, let me VERY cautiously bring in a note from Adam Clarke's commentary:

...fiery, inflammatory passion, and contention - altercations about the different points of the law, of no use for edification, such as those mentioned, Tit_3:9. The Jews were the most intolerant of all mankind; it was a maxim with them to kill those who would not conform to their law; and their salvation they believed to be impossible.

I think Clarke was a bit over the top, and indeed he uses that sentence to springboard into another of his anti-Catholic rants, but the point is valid:  The Judaizers were starting fights over their sanctimonious stand on keeping the OT Laws, and it got heated.  But heated doesn't always equal "right", and this was then the jealousy/emulation/zeal/envy that James was referencing.

So how do we go from "selfish ambition" to "provocation"?  Or, how about the other ways this word is translated (Feel free to raise your hand when I hit the one in your Bible)?  Contention; faction; the desire to get the better of others; rivalry; strife.  All of this coming from a word that if you just glance the surface you get the definition, "properly intrigue; that is, faction", but if you drill a bit deeper you get a source word which means to stimulate or provoke.  So, our "where you find one" side of the equation is basically, "Getting all hot and bothered and stirring things up."

Now, let's work on the "other" part.  Our first word is "disorder" by the ESV, while others may use "confusion" or "commotion", while I used instability.  Maybe even better was the JFB commentary, which uses the phrase "tumultuous anarchy".  If you drill down deep enough, you hit "absence of permanence".  I'm wondering why they didn't just use "chaos."

And that brings us to "vile practice"- easily broken into "foul deed or affair".  But is that the gist of it?  Vincent's word studies says, not quite...

An inadequate rendering, because it fails to bring out the particular phase of evil which is dominant in the word: worthlessness, good-for-nothingness...


Now, I semi-facetiously made mention of social media on the first two, and they fit right well; but you look at what it leads to in the "other" side of the equation, and it isn't quite so funny or tolerable anymore, is it?  But, if you scroll back up to the context verses, we see that it is what you get when you replace God's Wisdom with man's.  You go from calmness and meekness to hot angry emotion; from reasonable and persuasive to provocative and selfish; from stable to chaotic; and from good behavior to good-for-nothing behavior.  Note the third of the three descriptors of man's wisdom- demonic.  So what we have really witnessed here today is Satan's four-part plan for destroying mankind.

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Before I close, I would like to not libel Adam Clarke without an explanation.  To us, the Catholic Church is the place down the street with the bells and the organ, and the nuns teaching school.  For Clarke, he saw the Catholic Church as "Bloody Mary", Queen of England about 200 years previous, who "besides multitudes who suffered by fine, imprisonment, confiscation, etc., two hundred and seventy-seven were burnt alive, among whom were one archbishop, four bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight lay gentlemen, eighty-four tradesmen, one hundred husbandmen, fifty-five women, and four children!"  in her ZEAL to destroy the Reformation in England.  Maybe it wasn't right, but it wasn't blind prejudice.  IT DOES teach us, though, again where Satan wants to head us with his plan, because both Mary's actions and Clarke's words fit the first side of our equation.