Preface
My Preface is really the honest and humble beginnings of a stuttering kid who felt his desire for Jesus as early as I remember. Through the rebus of my earlier formative years I can pull back now and see that each particular event that seemed so emotionally disconnected to a Logical way of thinking was indeed beads on an infinite Stringed system which bore the name, LOGOS
and His ordered system.
Formative Years
I was born on July 18, 1967 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee until I was 10 years old. My recollection of 50 years ago captures that of a holy and magical time. That holy and magical Hub was in Memphis, Tennessee. I can never forget the particulars such as my address, zip code, phone number and layout of my home at 3351 Joselyn Street, zip code 38128, phone number 388-5193.
I went to Messiah Lutheran right off of Austin Peay Highway. This Highway shared my Dad’s business just a mile up the street. His business was called “Sherwin Williams- Raleigh Home Decorating Company”. Here, at my Dad’s place of business, he always saved me silver dollars and half dollars so that I would “one day” buy a better drum set than the one I had. Also, he would let me choose the art supplies by which I wished to express myself on the days I went to my Dad’s place of work. He taught me how to draw and play chess. He built for me the most elaborate (to this day) chess table I have ever seen. I still use this table, though mostly to study
Theology on. On the other side, Mom was the spirit of magic. She inspired me through each season with an overwhelming sense of color and the festivities that were associated with them. She made haunted houses out of boxes for me around the first of October so that I could feel all of October and its leading up to Halloween. Thanksgiving was beautiful because it filled the gap between Halloween and Christmas. Christmas was the pinnacle of the 3 months of magic with elves, Santa and the almighty Christ as the only reason for any of this. If Dad was the ‘sketch’ of
my life’s formative years then Mom was the color.
At my school I took for granted at times that all of the kids believed that Jesus was Lord and though we might ‘act out’ on occasion we had a spiritual compass by which we could gauge our thoughts, feelings, actions, etc. In the 1970s at a Messiah Lutheran, one was expected to respect your elders, parents, teachers, leaders within the Church and everyone in the paradigm of an isolated Christian life. This simply was the way it was no matter what the current opinion is.
I’ll never forget the Lutheran mosaic windows, purple, white, red candles, and cathedral ceiling which was very much like most Roman Catholic Church buildings. The sun’s light would illuminate us with a hues of purple, red, green, yellow, etc. I mostly sensed the overwhelming presence of the purple and red combination. These colors still beautifully haunt me around Christmas time. The regal sense by which liturgy was recognized without making it a challenged thing. Simply put, the icons of the church, the seasons by which we liturgically expressed them, and all of the somewhat historically pagan festivities that went with them simply exemplified
Christ’s beauty to me.Yes, a pagan’s Christ, nonetheless, Christ, the Creator of all of Creation both invisible and visible, powers and energies. A central focal point was what I had and now have again. Hardships to challenge these foundational beliefs and recognitions were to come and did.
Chapter One
Leaving my Eden
What happens when such a beautiful paradigm is shattered?
My Family left Memphis in 1979 due to a nearly instantaneous vaulting crime wave. We moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee (about 10 miles north of Nashville, Tennessee). It was then that I turned 11 that summer. I entered 6th grade and began attending a public school that was not focussed on God. The teachers were careful with me to talk about God or as they called it, “religion”. Such an idea was so foreign to me because I never thought that a relationship with a community of people who loved God would be called “religious”.
Instead of reverence as I understood the meaning to be in my youngest years I heard and witnessed some of the kids talk about every possible thing of disrespect toward the opposite sex, blaspheming God’s name in every possible way, and drugs and alcohol were already accepted as a norm for children who were only 10 and 11. Even children younger than 10 had I heard boasted of already doing drugs. It was beyond my capacity to mentally, morally and emotionally compute this. I can still remember the emotion of this hurting me for them and feeling the absolute loss of the Kingdom of God for their sakes. I remember not judging them but rather hurting for them. I even remember crying for them.
There were, of course, kids who opposed that way of thinking. Though, as the years passed, we integrated day after day and inevitably we started to act and think somewhat alike.
It was in 6th grade in my new school, new home, new neighborhood and new life that I obtained a stutter. My stutter destroyed any sense of strength – should I say “will power” – to fit in anywhere. I didn’t have the ability to be cool anymore, a commodity which was priceless in school. I asked God “why?”. The ridicule of my stutter became more and more. My stutter crippled me. For the first time in my life I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t want to socialize. The horror of speaking up in class, answering a question directed at me, reading aloud, etc. was enough to end me. I didn’t want to study or do school work. I didn’t want to go to school. I asked my Mom to allow me to skip school on days when I knew we had to read aloud or do oral book reports in front of the class.
During this time my Dad had taken on a corporate job which took him away from home. Sometimes, he wouldn’t come home. I’ll never forget the summer of 1980 when my Dad brought his corporate boss to my home where my Mom made a tremendous dinner for us all. Mr. Hillman Cagle was Dad’s boss’s name. Hillman Cagle is one of the particulars in my memory that I consider poetically pivotal. He treated my Mom like dirt. He wanted to show off his position I guess in front of my Dad. He talked down to her. Dad didn’t say anything about it. I believe it was to save his job. I still had the ethical mind of a child to want to tell this dragon to get out of our home. After this most memorable and horrible evening the following years of my life became more and more clouded. Everyday I practiced numbing myself mentally and emotionally to not ‘take in’ the day’s particulars (events) nor what life meant anymore.
From 1979 – 1982 one of the countless events of my mind numbering remembrances was our neighbors, the Lancasters. They had brought so much grief to my family with their drunken nights and coming over to our yard to trash it. One night, in a drunken fit, Mr. Lancaster threatened my Dad’s life. His son had thrown dog poop on my Mom over the fence. My Dad threw back their beer bottles that they had thrown onto our yard.
All of this torture from the Lancasters had lasted for nearly 3 years which took its toll on all of us. Their youngest son tortured me with words as well as throwing objects at me on the bus everyday only to threaten me with his much older and bigger brother to beat me up if I challenged him back. Not just this, but everyday I experience a new lie that he created about me and my family that I would attempt to debunk while stuttering. I wanted to die. I wanted to commit suicide. Eventually, my Dad got an attorney and with the severity of the threats made against my Dad and my Family and they had to move a long distance from our home. They had a restraining order set and I never heard from them again. Nonetheless, the trauma was instilled in all of us.
Jumping forward
Around 1982, my Dad showed signs of pressure to fit into the corporate. He joined the Lion’s club and stayed out late. He was influenced by Hillman Cagle to be more ‘social’. My Dad and Hillman Cagle would go out drinking. Later, I found out that they went to different clubs with not the best of intentions. Mom eventually found napkins with lipstick on them that weren’t hers in Dad’s car. Mom kept it together for the Family and also out of fear I’m sure. She did challenge Dad later. She knew this would be bad but she couldn’t allow this behavior to go on in front of me as a budding teen and her as a Wife who deserved a faithful husband. Dad had begun
drinking heavily during this time. His rages met his drinking sprees. I’ll never forget the day when she addressed him on his infidelity and alcoholism. She asked, “what has happened to you? Have I not always been faithfully yours? Have I always not been here for you?”. My Dad’s rage ended in him throwing a whiskey bottle at her and driving off. He didn’t come back until we acted on Faith a while later.
In 1985 I joined the Marines. I finished Boot Camp at Parris Island and I.T.S. (Infantry Training) at Camp Lejeune by January 1986. My Dad was gone during this time. He had left my Mom and me and was living with an assumed girlfriend. Though I was in the Military I felt the agony of my Mom being alone with only an 8th grade education living in a very expensive home in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Hendersonville. Not only did I have my challenges in some of the toughest training in the world I was thinking of my Mom constantly. At one point I even sent her
home money from my Military Base. This money was in the form of a government coupon. I thought it would help Mom. In my naivete I thought she could pay for the mortgage. Well, she couldn’t. Also, I couldn’t afford to purchase the necessary things for myself through training. This got me into a whole lot of trouble. Eventually, the commanding officer of our Company saw this as a noble act and I was exonerated from any wrongdoing.
All of these horrors that were happening at home made me feel like I should carry guilt for that. After all, in my teens I finally stood up against my Dad for yelling and screaming at my Mom and me which, I thought, *caused* Dad to leave. It’s all my fault I thought. I carried the guilt of protecting my Mom’s heart and body. Knowing what I know now, my Dad was nothing more than a fallen sinner like all of us. He needed Christ like all of us need Him now. I reasoned early on that it was my sin which put more responsibility on Dad and myself. I didn’t know what he had gone through, that is, the etiology of his life. Then, a new challenge came. Eventually in 1986 my Dad attempted suicide. Hillman Cagle, of all people, called me and said that my Dad was in the hospital and that my Dad’s condition was bad and that I needed to handle it like a man and ‘get over it’. This is the last I ever heard of Hillman Cagle. It was as though HIllman wanted me to ‘get over’ sadness, remorse, brokenness, humility, working it out through long suffering and forgiveness, etc. The true words of the Devil and the pivotal time in me and my Mom’s life where we did what Jesus would do.
Before there were the “What Would Jesus Do” wristbands my Mom asked me what we should do now? “Kyle, Dad left me for another woman, he has been excessively violent, etc…what should we do?” I said what the wristband questioned.
“What would Jesus do, Mom?” We took him home. We eventually lost that home. I filed for a line 7 and was honorably discharged finally in 1988. We regrouped. Dad came to the LORD. We became a God fearing Family again. Remembering all of my childhood I desired to start that all over again as part of the leadership to do so. For the next 24 years I was blessed to have them both in my life. We had challenges for sure but we recognized God as the Supreme Leader of our Family. We eventually created a nursing home on a private level and paid off all of our debt. We bought a humble home and I eventually purchased mine.
CONTINUED PAIN
I got married in 2000. My wife at the time moved from China to the U.S. getting her Masters in Business with English as a second language. She was a scientist in China. She was an unbeliever in God. She was in the Red Army and served the state. She came from poverty andfear in her youth. Her bedroom window in China was backed up to the public waste alley. She smelled feces all through her youth with a strong desire to leave and never come back one day. The hope of an ordered system that she could grasp ahold of to save her from poverty unto death was somewhat found for her within the Chinese communist paradigm. With many pitfalls in this system she decided to leave China. When she moved to the U.S. she carried with her the
attributes of what communism did and did not do for her as a living soul. Eventually, she became a Christian with many theological discussions that we had.
I raised her only daughter, Alicia, as my own. I eventually home schooled her due to her busy schedule as an ice figure skater – which she went on to place in the Nationals. She had great coaches and was even coached on occasion by Scott Hamilton, once by Michelle Kwan and other recognizable skaters.
I found once again a *magical* and *holy* place in this world. A world that I hadn’t experienced since I was very young in Memphis. My responsibilities were great concerning being a family man and joint income provider. My wife trusted what I did to teach and father Alicia. I spent pretty much every waking hour with Alicia as a homeschool parent and best friend/ Father. My wife spent time with Alicia as well as working at the ice skating facility. This was where Alicia trained and my wife’s job benefited us with some discounts and benefits. The only times I wasn’t with her and around my wife were when I taught music privately or played concerts. As Alicia, my daughter, was entering Columbia jr. college at 15 years old with supervision as a minor and with just a few more high school credits to go, she exhibited a high academic ability for languages and science. I must always give credit to her mother for teaching her the sciences and higher math for which I would never have been equipped to have done. So, her mother being a Chinese scientist and imbued knowledge to Alicia and the saturation of proto Indo European languages (especially Greek) and Hebrew completed her in the areas of languages and science. Alicia had become fully fit to receive knowledge with a categorizing mind.
Alicia and I studied Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Proto Indo European linguistics together since she was 10. I had her analyzing Shakespeare at an even earlier age. She understood Anglo Saxon roots as well. She linked etymologies to Biblical Studies. She found truths of how the Biblical languages exemplified the classical languages of the old world. She found a ‘collective Logos’ through this genius of language studies showing a richness and more importantly a Hope fulfilled from the authors who wrote in ancient Greek, Assyrian, Akaddian, Sumerian, etc. She saw how Christ was the answer for all that the ancients were reaching for without the fleshly conclusion found in Jesus’ life and death. She began to be able to break down any word and follow its etiology and etymology. This beautiful gift followed into her scientific studies as well.
Our lives were without question seemingly ‘successful’. I had no thought other than the present time that all was well. During that time while Alicia would be training I began working on theological lectures that I put to audio recording and text. This gave me even more fulfillment. I was able to process the events of my life with God’s works upon my family’s. This was the era upon which I began a foundation of theological thought that has continued to the present day.
MY PARENT’S ‘SKETCH’ AND ‘COLOR’
I revived that same exact spirit during these times that my Mom and Dad did with me concerning the holidays, times and seasons of the year, etc. At night to put us to sleep we would watch Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings together. We watched all of the Jesus movies ever made. All such entertainment gave us a gentle hand in putting us to sleep. All was seemingly well with
us. My wife at the time worked with me to get out of any debt that she was adamant about. I absolutely concurred. We were debt free at the prime of our lives. House paid for, cars paid for, no debt minus food, electricity and insurance.
During my time with Alicia and my first wife I would begin building “Haunted Houses” in my backyard around August. The process was one of my biggest joys in planning and executing these projects every year. It would take on the average 3 months to build each one of these and
at least that much time to break them down. By the last week in October we would have our two nights, sometimes 3 with outside black and white silent Dracula (Nosferatu) movies, people reading Edgar Allen Poe, entertainment such as Steppenwolf’s guitarist, Bobby Cochran, singing Halloween songs, while ca 40 actors in the Haunted House would terrify anyone who dared to enter this ‘maze of death’. We also had food cooking on the grills with all of the associated smells of joy and the sounds of people ecstatically screaming in the Haunted House. Cars parked for blocks down the street, etc. It was like the spirit of the 1970s had visited the new millennium. With our Bose sound system and 50 smoke machines roaring no
one could miss this monstrosity for miles. The Haunted House would take up ½ an acre alone not to mention all of the other activities taking up the rest of the back yard. Some 80 – 100 rooms comprised these Haunted Houses that I built for Alicia for nearly 13 years. I didn’t care because of the joy it brought Alicia.
With all of that collective joy that nearly all felt it only made my wife happy if we made a profit off of it. I didn’t charge people a lot to come to our Haunted House because I wanted there to be some joy in doing something other than money as a focus. I charged enough to recover from the materials and did get it. I put all of it into my wife’s hands every year and said we have a little more than what we put into it. She was never satisfied with a little more. Though everyone loved it and that everyone came to it every year, it was obvious that abundant profit was all that she
cared about concerning these joyful endeavors. We were debt free and making close to 100 k/ per year. What did it matter? We were thankful, joyful, happy, at peace I thought.
My wife’s lack of emotional sharing became evident to me more and more as our marriage continued. Intimacy in every way became nil from her side. I asked my wife “could we have a child together?”. She said to me, “you are not worth having a child with, you don’t make enough money”. She began to only talk about money when we were better off than ever financially. I thought if I worked harder for whatever reason she would be more secure and joyful. That never happened. I put everything into Alicia to show my wife that I am ‘worthy’ to be a father and
husband. I put every bit of compassion and kindness that I had in me to my wife. I worked harder than ever. I thought my efforts and will could hold this marriage together. I thought that though skating bills were astronomical it never hurt us because we made enough and were debt free. Shouldn’t this make her happy? It was still not enough.
During Alicia’s first year of college both of my parent’s health began to fail. I had always loved my parents beyond the stars. No matter what had happened in the past Christ’s love had healed us all. I was the first to forgive because I always had the most guilt for some reason. I felt guilt because “I had to hold it together”. My bond with them was as a child’s love for their parents. With more bills coming in for college, parent’s need for financial resources, emotional necessity from a wife at this time when my parents were both dying, etc. I thought that my wife would be there for me. Instead, she told me as we were driving to the hospital for the last time that Mom would be alive that “if I made more money they wouldn’t be dying”. My parent’s pre-existing conditions trajected exactly as they should have to these times and dates of devastation.
ENTERS THE HOLY GHOST
With my Mom dying June 30, 2011 at 3:30 pm and my Dad dying on November 10, 2011 at 7:45 pm they had left me on this earth with a void that was filled by God. I still tried to create hope in this world with my wife. With no intimacy, blame for what I couldn’t have stopped concerning my parent’s death, violent challenges of “why don’t we just get a divorce” anytime we had an argument, to the self preservatory fear of losing my home that I paid off for way before I met my wife were all of a sudden caught up into a ball of grace. The Holy Spirit comforted me and
directed me to go to her and say, “I want a divorce”. I went on to win an EMMY that year and Ricky Skaggs picked me up as his percussionist. It was like God was telling me to trust him and that I would not falter.
There were still residual effects that cost me more than I can explain here, throwing me into bankruptcy years later after fighting financial devastation and failure to recover. Yet, a bank filled with God’s gold, that is, a loving Wife who cares for me and gave me a child named Eden and two beautiful step children.
So much good has happened in between all of these events but I have listed what I intended to do is show you. Trials are NEVER over. God not only knows and not only plans but ordains your joy and your sufferings to make you understand GOD’s value and your value.
FINAL STATEMENTS
I would like to mention that my Daughter, Alicia, transferred to Belmont University. She studied Biology obtaining a 3.8 G.P.A. and achieving awards for academic and leadership excellence. She went to Medical School at E.T.S.U. where she matriculated ranking high in her grades. She presently is a practicing M.D. having finished her residency. All of my inherited step kids are Honor Students thriving with brilliant inquisitive minds. My seven year old is learning the Greek New Testament and figuring out etymologies with the fervor for truth like all of my other children.
Alicia, Ethan, Fiona, Eden and my Wife, Samantha, are a gift beyond comprehension.
I would also like to go back in time to 1986 when I first came back from the Marines to see my Dad at the hospital. A time when I needed a spiritual guide. Here, I would like to mention Jim Brown, a hard line minister from Texas, who addressed me with the idea of Predestination after Dad had attempted suicide. Jim also imbued me with the importance of knowing the Greek and Hebrew Text of the Bible. For this, I will always be grateful to God for Jim. Because of Jim’s influence I enrolled in college to study Greek and Hebrew. If it hadn’t been for this agent of
God’s knowledge I don’t know where I would be. Keep this in mind we are all agents whether ‘unsaved’ or ‘saved’. Here, I must qualify my statement: we’re all on a journey to God and secondly I have been part of the ‘unsaved’ being saved. This will be addressed later. I would like to also mention my Dad for keeping my interest in drumming all those years. I would like to mention my Mom for inspiring me to be different, abstract sometimes, and fill the air with new worlds for all to enjoy.
Chapter Two
GOD, THE GRAND GEOMETER
God’s advancing the least (me)
My first semester of Greek and was an eye opener. I found that classical Greek and Biblical Greek conveyed a kind of ‘geometry’. I found Hebrew to be ‘referential’ to the landscapes that the ancient Hebrews saw. “Eternity” could reference as far as the eye could see or maybe to the horizon where time and earth ‘cut off’. These languages held linguistic shapes by which one could relate a prepositional stance. Words such as “dia, en, hupo, huper, eis, peri, olam, ets, ayin, eyah, eyelah, etc. All such words were in relation to God and not man. They helped me to understand ‘where’ I stood with God in the Greek New Testament. Mental ‘shapes’ would be tapestried into the analysis of these two linguistic Biblical landscapes. This was the vast ocean I
had begun to dip my feet into.
CONCERNING THE GREEKS
Euclid and Plato immediately come to my mind when addressing ‘time as space’. Classical Greek and New Testament Greek shared a kind of spatiality that could convey higher philosophical and Theological maxims (launching points for reasoning).
Astronomically and geographically speaking, the Greeks held that the fullness of a time was shown as “paths”. Paths of spheres, orbs, circles, patterns of circles, the completions of rotations, orbits, etc. showed a “completion”. An example of the fullness of a time might be the planets completing their orbiting and passing through their constellar housings in the heavens only to return again to the beginning point of which their trek began. In this approach, the Greeks looked at time as space. Later, it was a necessity to show a more unified way with other
cultures a measured sense by which the Greeks could convey time.
It was only after this that the Greeks used these spheres to justify increments of measurement in a rectilinear fashion with spheres and spatialities as their models for time measurement. Not only the Greeks, but many Indo European and Indo-Aryan cultures hold that spheres signal time at hand or a point of special significance. As an Indian percussionist I have to understand and execute my knowledge in the talas or time cycles via hand gestures, finger placements, etc. I
can give the visual signal to the other musicians as to where we are in a complex rhythmic pattern by the position, shape or configuration of my hand. In the west we are more accustomed to counting in a linear fashion until the piece is through. In the Indian, we finalize when the cycles are through.
The language of God and man
In one way, there is no difference between English and Greek. People generally use prepositions without thinking about it. Words such as “pro, pre, dia, through, eis, into, en, in, hupo, under, huper, above, peri, around, etc.” are all employed to communicate placement within a paradigm of space.
What grabbed me was that there was a Theology necessitated by the usage of prepositions in the New Testament Greek (and, developmentally, to the Platonic dialogues). I later realized in the semester that these prepositional words would come in very handy in understanding how we relate to the God of the Greek New Testament.
The Prepositions of Christ Colossians 1:16 – 20 (speaking of Christ)
“For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible , whether they be thrones, or dominions , or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him.
1:17 And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. 1:18 And He is the head of the body, the Church: Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
1:19 For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell;
1:20 And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to *reconcile all things* unto Himself, by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven”. Now, let’s read it again with focus on the prepositions:
1:16 “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible , whether they be thrones, or dominions , or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him.
1:17 And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.
1:18 And He is the head of the body, the Church: Who is the beginning, the firstborn from thedead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
1:19 For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell;
1:20 And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to *reconcile all things* unto Himself, by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven”.
Prepositionally, this passage concludes that Christ precedes all things in time. In verse 20 it says that through His blood on the cross and that all things in Christ will be fully restored unto Himself..
reconcile – apokatallassó – ‘fully restore’; ‘bring back to new’; ‘bring back to harmony
all things – ta’ panta – ‘everything’; ‘all’; ‘every’; ‘without loss of anything’;
How does all of this theology and language study relate to me?
If you are a believer in Christ you will inevitably experience tragedy. You will inevitably experience hardships, possibly on a daily basis. It can be easy to conclude that you are the only one who has ever gone through specifically this or that. We can also conclude through tragedy that joy and revelation come out of this contiguum.
I would probably agree with you if you told me that. Some of us might find it embarrassing to feel that way so we remain silent and internalize a kind of specialness in our sufferings. We wait for a logic that can come from such a suffering of uniqueness not found in an idea about God’s Sovereignty ‘because God wouldn’t cause harm to us’.
If we claim the narrative that God wouldn’t cause suffering then we illogically weaponize our special sufferings and suspend our beliefs in an Invisible-Sovereign God resulting in a blockage of human intercourse with God.
UNHEALTHY ‘SPECIALNESS’
Thinking that “only I have suffered like ‘this’, therefore, I have some kind of claim on this type of suffering” one might find their specialness not only in their uniqueness of suffering but their justifications for acting as a free agent, a rogue of sorts, that can tell you that “no one has suffered like me”. This specialness can be argued away through Scripture. Here, we are at the crux of the verse that you hopefully just read:
Colossians 1:16: “ For Him and by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether it be thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him”.
With the above the Scripture, we can make the argument that this only applies to political powers since Thronoi (thrones), Kuriotaytes (lords/ magistrates), arxai (rulers), and exousiai (authorities) were used.
Maybe one could say that these invisible and visible powers are heads in heaven, earth and hell.
Here’s a look at a verse in the Bible which hints to us the invisible existent powers (αόρατες υπάρχουσες δυνάμεις) that run their predeterminate courses:
James 4:13 “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on αόρατες υπάρχουσες δυνάμεις and make money’. You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! Who are you/ what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a short duration and then vanishes. What you should say is this: ‘If it is the Lord’s Will, we should even live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil”.
Just think about this last verse for a moment. There is an invisible Will that is going on while we are perceiving in the flesh that we are doing something. Evil is defined right here as speaking as though you can do something at all. It is also defined as bragging. Our apostle James wants us to understand it this way: “if God wills then we should even live”. How far have we come from this in our daily church thinking, planning, organizing, preaching, teaching, etc.? Today we have become Christians in a secular society laden with a language that does not exalt God and His will in our lives and many of us don’t even recognize the discrepancy. Sin speaks true and consistently as to what ‘freedom from’ God’s righteousness is. In this, sin doesn’t lie.