Co-Parent Conflict STILL at the Forefront

James 4:1-10

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Remember that in James, he is writing to the Christian Jews. The Jews had frequent wars with the Romans, and they were a very quarrelsome and divided people, often fighting among themselves. The Christian Jews were prone to falling into some of those common quarrels. James is instructing them that maybe the origin of their need for fighting was not a true zeal for their country or for God’s honor (as they had pretended), but that their own lust for power was the cause of all. He also blamed their pride, malice, covetousness, ambition, and revenge for the conflicts they were having. It is not unlike some co-parents in conflict who may say the fight is necessary “for the sake of the kids,” without realizing that the conflict itself may produce a worse outcome than the so-called reason for the fight.