The Big Ideas in Chapter 1

     Chapter one reads like someone trying to get everything they ever wanted to say out in one long paragraph, doesn't it! It seems a little overwhelming to sort out what the main idea is. I finally decided, it isn't a main idea kind of passage, it's an introduction. James uses this long preamble to mention everything he is going to talk about in the rest of the book.
     That will have interesting implications as we study. I wonder [and haven't really checked it out yet] if we labeled each section of James with the sentence about it from chapter one if we would have great topical headlines, pointing to those main ideas? That will be fun to play with as we keep studying.
     So I made kind of an odd outline, which I will share on Tuesday, with Point one being all of chapter one, then a dozen spaces beneath it for everything mentioned. Does that mean there are a dozen topics in James? It doesn't seem like it, so some must be grouped together. We will have to see how it works out.
     I'm hoping you will do your own list, but also want to share mine since it is an unusual concept.  You might come up with a better way to organize it than I did.

1:1-27 James introduces the ideas he will be correcting in the rest of the book.
     vs 2 understanding trials
     vs 5 wisdom
     vs 6 being double minded
     vs 9 equality / discrimination
     vs 13  temptation / it's source
     vs 16  gifts/ first fruits
     vs 19  moral purity
     vs 22 the Word
     vs 26 the tongue
     vs 27 true religion

     The rest of the outline, in cased you're curious, just follows the chapter divisions in our workbook. There would be several ways to outline the book, and it is not as important how it is done as it is to just do it in a way that makes sense to you. We will be talking about outlining the book and determining the book's purpose and some of those kind of academic types of things the end of the study. I hope you experiment with some of those ideas as we go along so you will have "wet feet" by then and will be ready to contribute to the discussion.
      Speaking of the purpose of the book, I have a theory. I will only call it a theory, because 8 weeks from now we will have such a better understanding of James, it makes me hesitate to be bold now. Experience is a great teacher. I've learned to pencil in my great ideas.  But the last two verses of James seem so oddly tacked on to the end of the book that it's hard to explain why they are there, except as James' explanation for why he has written the letter.
      True; the end of the book encourages us to intimate moment by moment community. Pray, sing, confess, believe. James may be saying to the believers, in the midst of that intimate community life, be faithful to turn a sinner from the error of his way. But he probably could have added, "Like I just did in this letter."