Better Angels

Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from?  Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess.  You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask.  You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

This passage from James reminds me of Abraham Lincoln who ended his first inaugural address with this impassioned plea about saving the Union by calming the South’s fears:

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Wars and conflicts arise when our better angels are beat down by the passions “making war within our members.”  Our passions are hammers we bring down on our better angels.

It’s up to all of us to stay the hand and act rightly; that is, to keep strong the bonds of affection by listening to those better angels and not the worse and darker ones enslaving us to our passions.

Deacon David Pierce