The Cause of Conflict

“The sole cause of wars and revolutions and battles is nothing other than desire.” —Plato

James asks, as we do, why there is so much violence in the world. “Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up  (James 4:1-10).

What causes fights and quarrels—border disputes, racial tensions, family squabbles, marital spats, sibling rivalry? Why is there so much discord and dissonance in the world? Why can’t we just get along? James answers his own question: violence occurs  because, “You want something and don’t get it.” 

James swings his axe at the root of the problem—a smothering absorption with ourselves—getting what we want when we want it. Frustrated in the pursuit of our own good we resort to rage and cruel force.

All the conflict in the world stems from “desire,” says James, a Greek word from which we get our word “hedonism.” Hedonism is the notion that only what is pleasant, or has pleasant consequences, is intrinsically good. Taken to its extreme it’s the relentless and ruthless pursuit of personal pleasure without regard for others. 

There are no bad or unlawful pleasures. “Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated (put to it’s intended use) by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4: 4, 5). “Pleasures are shafts of glory,” C. S. Lewis states, intimations of God’s goodness and love, serendipitous occasions of his grace. 

Nor is there anything wrong with desiring pleasure or seeking it. Pleasures only become unlawful when they are snatched in the wrong way, or at the wrong time. It is the stealing of a watermelon that is wrong, not the melon.

The trouble comes when the pursuit of pleasure puts us in conflict with another human being similarly inclined. Two people desire a pleasurable thing, but both cannot have it at once. (Two drivers converging on the last parking space at a crowded mall comes to mind.) One or the other is thwarted in his desire, a frustration that can soon escalate into anger, blows and lethal rage. “You want something, but don’t get it, (so) you kill.” (It is a fact that most homicides are not premeditated acts, but “crimes of passion,” as we say, prompted by frustration and deeply regretted after the fact.) The unguarded pursuit of pleasure can lead to terrifying violence. James does well to warn us.

Every evil in the world springs from unrestrained desire. “It is insatiable desires which overturn not only individual men, but whole families, and which even bring down the state. From desires there spring hatred, schisms, discords, seditions and wars,” wrote Cicero, the Roman statesman. 

Philo, Cicero’s Jewish near–contemporary, said much the same: “Is it not because of desire that relations are broken, and natural goodwill changed into desperate enmity, that great and populous countries are desolated by domestic dissensions, and land and sea filled with ever new disasters by naval battles and land campaigns? For wars famous in tragedy…have all flowed from one source—desire for money, or glory or pleasure. Over these things the human race goes mad.” Undisciplined, unrestrained desire is at the root of all that is wrong with our world.

James’ solution is profoundly simple: when you want something and can’t get it—ask God for it. When your need for human love and approval is frustrated—ask God. When your hunger for appreciation and respect is ungratified—ask God. When your desire for peace and quiet is hindered—ask God. When in the pursuit of any pleasure you collide with someone pursuing his or her pleasure, rather than insist that your needs be met—ask God. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift and it delights his heart to give. If our needs are not met, James says, it is simply because we have not asked.

But there is one proviso: we must ask with a submissive will. We cannot dictate the time or terms of our satisfaction. It may be that God will give us what we want, but give it to us later than we would like to have it. It may be that he will not give us what we want at all. He may ask us to forgo the thing we want, but he will give us the satisfaction we are seeking. It’s not the thing we seek that matters anyway—it fades and is forgotten. It’s the joy that accompanies it. Authentic joy is an effect quite apart from any natural cause. 

What this means is that we must give our deepest desires to God and let him satisfy us his way. The alternative—taking matters into our own hands—James calls adultery. It’s an apt metaphor. When we seek satisfaction on our own and apart from God’s love, we are unfaithful to the lover of our souls who longs to satisfy each desire of our heart. 

Furthermore, James continues, such unfaithfulness is “friendship with the world.” It aligns us with the world’s way of doing things—its motivations, methods and moods. Here again is worldliness: the uncompromising pursuit of pleasure, making our good the highest good. It’s nothing more than self–centeredness and pride. Of all interfering things pride is the worst for it keeps us from God and all that he has in mind for us. That’s why he must oppose it and, if necessary, bring us to our knees. Only then can he do good things for us. 

There is, however, an alternative to God’s humbling: we can “humble ourselves.” We can submit to his will—acknowledge his right to give us what we want his way. By so doing we “resist the devil,” who is behind our restless, loveless self–seeking. “And with that  (by drawing near) Apollyon spread forth his dragon wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more” (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress). 

We can “draw near to God” in prayer. When we do so he will draw near to us. In his presence we find the satisfaction we crave. 

We must “wash our hands and purify our hearts”—cleanse ourselves from selfish actions and attitudes that defile us and demean others. Self–derived, self–centered pleasure is not a small indiscretion, or a slight impoliteness, but a deadly perversion. We ought to “grieve, mourn and wail” over it. Selfishness is serious sin indeed. 

Then, having humbled ourselves, God will exalt us, lift us higher than we were before. The thing we sought—the thing we thought we must have—is lost in the pure pleasure of God–given delight.

Bernard of Clairvaux wrote long ago, “What will you do if your needs are not met? Will you look to God to meet your needs? God promises that those who seek first the kingdom and his righteousness will have all things added to them. God promises that to those who restrict themselves and give to their neighbor he will give whatever is necessary. Seeking first the kingdom means to prefer to bear the yoke of modesty and restraint rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body” (from On the Love of God).

Asking God to meet our needs is much better than getting what we want our way, for, as James puts it, God gives a “greater grace” (4:6)—a grace greater than anything we could ever get on our own.

David Roper

9.12.19

Excerpted from my Growing Slowly Wise, Discovery House Publishers