![kanye west graduation album parody kanye west graduation album parody](https://www.guilford.com/covers/large/9781572309654.jpg)
Like someone who gazes admiringly in a mirror, your self-understanding always requires booster shots of another peek, another day, whereas the one who looks into God’s commands for self-understanding can perceive an enduring standard of who we are and should be.
![kanye west graduation album parody kanye west graduation album parody](https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9781416552741_9781416552741_hr.jpg)
By the same token, our merely listening to divine teaching without putting it into effect shows that you have not benefited from God’s commands you remain a half-hearted, unstable semi-believer. You cannot give voice to God’s wrath out of your own irritation at another. You cannot, he counsels us, casually insult your neighbor (who is, like you, made in God’s own image) and presume to be approved by God. James cares particularly about the ways we characteristically speak precisely because speech is so easy, so immediate, and so very hard to control, James sees it as the test case for genuine faithfulness. In this context, this morning’s reading stakes out some of the difficult terrain on which the readers are called to cultivate their piety.
#KANYE WEST GRADUATION ALBUM PARODY TRIAL#
James understands the inclination to mix allegiance to God with practical concerns for oneself, but cautions his readers that such divided loyalties will not withstand the trial of hard times. Earlier in the letter, James has criticized those who respond to God with only partial commitment (“double-minded man, unstable in all his ways”), echoing Jesus’ warning against setting one’s heart on earthly treasures, or against putting one’s hand to the plough and looking back.
#KANYE WEST GRADUATION ALBUM PARODY FREE#
As God the Father brought us into being in an act of perfectly free giving, so we - “a kind of first fruits of his creatures” - display God’s own changeless goodness and generosity by truthfulness, humility, gratitude, patience, steadfastness, and generous provision for those who depend on us. Here and throughout the letter, James drives toward the point that our theological integrity - our whole-hearted, consistent, comprehensive devotion to God - requires of us a particular kind of life and character. The theological substance of the passage, however, lies in its deep connections to the rest of James’s theology, and James expresses his ideas so circuitously that one can easily lose track of it. It’s tempting to fixate on the apparent contrast to Paul’s teaching on justification by faith alone, although the contrast is less sharp than might appear to a casual reader.
![kanye west graduation album parody kanye west graduation album parody](http://www.blessedbeyondadoubt.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/studyofjamesimage.jpg)
These verses from the Epistle of James include the point that the epistle is best known for: “e doers of the word, and not merely hearers,” just as next week we will read James reminding us that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”