The Mirror You Walk Away From

James has just warned that anger does not produce the righteousness God desires, and that the word planted in us is able to save us. Then he draws a picture. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Whoever listens and does not do is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, goes away, and immediately forgets what he looks like.

The image is stranger than it first appears. Mirrors in the first century were polished metal, and the reflection was dim, so a man might genuinely look and learn little. But James is not saying the mirror is faulty. He is saying the man walks away. He saw something, perhaps something that needed attention, and the act of leaving erased it. The problem is not the quality of the hearing. It is the absence of the doing that would have fixed the hearing in place.

This is a quiet indictment of a certain kind of Christian life, and many of us recognize it. We hear well. We listen to sermons, sometimes several a week. We read, underline, nod. And then Monday arrives and the reflection has faded, not because we rejected what we heard but because we never did anything with it. James calls this self-deception, which is a hard word, because it means the person feels spiritually well fed while going hungry.

The alternative is the one who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting but doing. Look intently. Continue. Do. James promises that this person will be blessed in what they do, and the blessing is located in the doing, not in the looking.

So the turn toward life today is modest. Take one thing you heard or read this week and do it before the weekend ends. Not several things. One. Make the call, return the money, apologize, give the gift, stop the habit for one day. The word planted in you is meant to grow into something visible, and visible things begin small.