It ought not to be so!

The Epistle of James, like the synoptic Jesus, sets out to unmask the strategies of those who claim to be religious and yet act out of narrow self-interest (Jas 1:26–27). In so doing, the author exposes the exploitive strategies of the rich and powerful and reveals the plight of the poor. The world, now as then, is divided sharply into rich and poor nations, and all nations are also divided into rich and poor. In the poor nations, the poverty is pitiful, and in the struggle for survival the poor, wherever they are, cannot win. Meanwhile the rich live in wasteful luxury, obscuring reality while justifying the inequality into which people are born and from which they cannot escape. In this situation the James of the epistle says, “My brothers and sisters, it ought not to be so!”—John Painter in Reading the Epistle of James: A Resource for Students, ed. Eric F. Mason and Darian R. Lockett, forthcoming