SUMMARY
James warns his readers concerning the danger of trying to claim friendship with God while living a life characterized by envy and covetousness.
ANALYSIS
James contrasts friendship with the world and friendship with God. As James understands them, the two are mutually exclusive. To be a friend of the world is to live as an enemy of God.
In this context, “friendship with the world” has nothing to do with friendship in the sense of caring for creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and..., loving one’s neighbors, or with having friends in daily life. For James, friendship with the world is shorthand for the avarice, envy, and combativeness that characterize life and relationships when human beings fear, love, and trust worldly goods as measures of an individual’s worth, status, and happiness. In such a world, values are turned upside down: people are treated as tools to be used; things are treated as objects to be loved. James compares this reversal of values to infidelity and warns readers against such a way of life. He warns them, also, against thinking that they can split their allegiance between friendship with the world and friendship with God.
This section of the letter ends with a call to conversion, that is, a call for readers to resist evil and live as a community characterized by humility and single-minded devotion to God.
