Foolish Presumptions

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit” . . . You boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

—James 4:13, 16

The person James described in these verses lives as if tomorrow will never come. He is obsessed with making money. Materialism is his master. Motivated by greed, he is primarily concerned about accruing the world’s wealth. He’s not a bad guy. In fact, there’s nothing to indicate he is either unethical or unprofessional. His ability to plan ahead serves him well, and he is self-confident, goal-oriented, and profit-motivated. And he lives life as a practical atheist with no consideration of God. Sadly, his “I can do it all on my own” philosophy reflects a common twenty-first-century mentality.

Still, most companies would hire someone like him. Failure was not in his vocabulary, and in his mind failing was an absolute impossibility. This man’s attitude, not his actions, is the issue here. His problem was that he made all his plans without any consideration of God whatsoever. He lived by foolish presumptions. And James called him out: “You boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

First, in his arrogance, this man made presumptions about the when. He said, “Today or tomorrow.” There’s nothing wrong with planning ahead, but this man left out of his plans this key element: “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that” (James 4:15). While he was boasting about what he might do tomorrow, James reminded him—and us—that life is but “a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). The real problem is that we don’t look far enough into the future and consider the eternal significance of how we’re living now. James’s warning is for any of us who make presumptions about tomorrow. God warned, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1).

In his arrogance, this man also made presumptions about the where. He said he’d go “to such and such a city.” Can you see this fellow in a strategy planning session with his team? Write-ups of all the research and data are scattered across the conference table. Population trends and growth potential of various locales are debated. Yet he drew his conclusions without any regard for the data, without any clue or concern that God’s plans might be different from his own.

And our friend’s foolish presumptions didn’t stop here. He continued, this time making presumptions about the what. He said that he would “buy and sell, and make a profit.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with being goal-oriented unless we completely leave God out of our plans. Talk about someone driven by goals, consider Saul of Tarsus. He had his life all figured out—the when, the where, the what, and even the why: he was headed to Damascus to put down this Christian uprising (Acts 9). He thought he was doing God a service and that the Almighty would be pleased. However, God had other plans that Saul (soon to be called Paul) could not have even considered. God knocked Paul off his horse and transformed his life. For the rest of his days, Paul approached life with this addendum: “If it be the Lord’s will, I will . . .”

Finally, in his arrogance, the man James described made presumptions about the why, the motivation for living as he was. His underlying motivation was to “make a profit.” Again, there is nothing wrong with being profit-motivated. In fact, Jesus commended it (Matthew 25:14–30). This man’s problem is that he still hadn’t considered the will of the Lord in any of his planning. For many the chief end of life is to add a little more to the bottom line.

So what motivates you? There is nothing wrong with making a profit. But profits made without any desire to honor the Lord with our possessions often bring misery and mayhem, even heartbreak and heartache.

Our friend of whom James spoke complicated his predicament by arrogantly “boasting and bragging” about his plans. The warning for us is plain: don’t make presumptions about the future without consulting God. This warning doesn’t mean that we should be passive. We ought to do more detailed planning than anyone else. We should be goal-oriented and profit-motivated because we have Someone on our side guiding us and leading us, and He always knows best. He is also “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). And, as Christians, we need to include this in all our plans: “If the Lord wills” (James 4:15).

Perhaps you’re experiencing your own recession of the soul, a period of reduced spiritual activity. Be watchful. Recessions—whether economic or spiritual—are often rooted in foolish presumptions.