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This performance and commentary comes from Wyatt Witemeyer, a student who was part of a group that performed James and 1 Peter. We’re glad to be able to feature Wyatt’s thoughtful performance on\u00a0Stories for the Sojourn<\/em>.<\/p>\n This portion near the middle of the letter of James is often used for lessons on the specific topics in introduces: faith with works and taming the tongue. However, this powerful and exciting portion of James\u2019s letter deeply connects to his main points and themes in his letter overall. By performing this section, I attempt to highlight James\u2019s incredibly powerful analogies and logical arguments that connect back to his primary concern.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Throughout the letter of James, it appears that the audience as a community seems to be struggling with thinking and claiming one thing while acting in a seemingly contrary way. For instance, James warns his audience to be doers and not only hearers of the word (1:22), he warns them against being a friend of the world (4:4), and he warns them against doubting when they ask God for wisdom (1:6-8). In each scenario, James is trying to keep his audience from this \u201cdouble-mindedness\u201d where one part of the mind thinks and claims to follow God while the other part of the same mind shows evidence to the contrary, often instead following the world.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This theme makes itself present throughout the section presented here as well. James uses some powerful analogies and effective repetition to drive home the point that faith <\/span>without deeds<\/span><\/i> is useless. James seems to be communicating that one part of the mind \u201cclaims to have faith\u201d but the other important part, the deeds, is missing. However, both are completely necessary, and must work together, in order to achieve righteousness.<\/span><\/p>\n I attempt to highlight this feature of James by consistently using two distinct gestures for \u201cfaith\u201d and \u201cworks\u201d when performing the passage. Specifically, when the two are not together, my arms fall down to my side, becoming ineffective. Even in his analogy of telling a naked, hungry person to \u201ckeep warm and well fed\u201d while \u201cdoing nothing,\u201d I use the same gestures to emphasize that \u201cin the same way\u201d that doing nothing made the words of consolation useless in the analogy, not having works makes a person\u2019s faith useless. However, when both faith and actions are working together, the faith is \u201cmade complete\u201d and a person is made righteous as demonstrated by the two gestures coming together to form the same gesture I use for righteousness.<\/span><\/p>\n The theme of double-mindedness is perhaps even more obvious near the end of this passage as James mentions praise and cursing being spoken from the same mouth. Again, part of the mind is following God through praise, but the other part acts contrary by cursing humans made in God\u2019s own likeness.<\/span><\/p>\n Attempting to highlight this point a bit more directly, I actually used the same gesture for \u201cdouble-mindedness\u201d as my fellow classmate that performed the first part of James 1. Both when talking directly about praise and cursing coming from the same mouth, and when talking through an analogy of salt and fresh water flowing from the same spring, I matched the gesture used by my fellow student to further emphasize the warning of James to keep from double-mindedness.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alongside his powerful analogies that excellently display this theme, James also constructs several logical arguments through the rhetorical structure of his letter. This is made most obvious through his extensive use of rhetorical questions. In this way, James not only warns his audience against double-mindedness, but he also displays its ludicrousness through asking questions that have obvious answers.<\/span><\/p>\n I primarily attempt to feature this aspect of James\u2019s letter through my tonal inflections when leading up to and asking the several different questions. Specifically, after saying that praise and cursing is coming from the same mouth, I give a pause after addressing \u201cMy brothers and sisters\u201d to give a loud, short exhale and confused look as a way of displaying a sense of \u201cthis should be obvious\u201d before stating \u201cthis should not be.\u201d Some may even notice the very similar gesture to the one given at the beginning for the rhetorical question: \u201cWhat good is it?\u201d To further show how obvious and logical his point is, James enters his series of analogous questions regarding water flowing from springs and trees bearing fruit. I attempt to display these obvious correct answers through my tone as well. For example, I emphasize the fruits in the question: \u201cCan a <\/span>fig<\/span><\/i> tree bear <\/span>olives<\/span><\/i>?\u201d In the end, I did my best to display the strong language and powerful analogies James uses regarding his topic while still retaining his logical argument through great use of rhetorical questions.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This performance and commentary comes from Wyatt Witemeyer, a student who was part of a group that performed James and 1 Peter. We’re glad to be able to feature Wyatt’s thoughtful performance on\u00a0Stories for the Sojourn. Performance Notes:\u00a0 This portion near the middle of the letter of James is often used for lessons on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8023,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94224,198157],"tags":[198169,198170,198168],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-james","category-performances","tag-james-2","tag-james-3","tag-wyatt-witemeyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8023"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/storiesforthesojourn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h2>\n
<\/h2>\n
Performance Notes:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Double-mindedness<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
Faith and Works<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
Obvious Answers to Rhetorical Questions<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n