Humility and Faith

Humility and Faith
James 4.1-10

Schoolchildren of a certain age form exclusive friendships. Great human dramas are played out on a small scale when your daughter comes home in tears because her ‘best friend’ has declared she isn’t her best friend any more, but has taken up with someone else. It seems for a moment like the end of the world. Such crises are often short-lived, not least because children grow out of that phase of life and learn to make friends more widely, and on a variety of levels.

But in other respects exclusivity is the very essence of a relationship. The obvious example is marriage. Various societies have experimented with polygamy, and even polyamory, but something deep in the human psyche seeks to bond with one person above all others. The temptation to stray is of course notorious and sometimes powerful, but it usually leads, if anywhere, not to multiple simultaneous relationships (or, if it does, the people concerned find themselves torn apart inside), but to a new exclusive bond...

Taken from Early Christian Letters for Everyone – by Tom Wright