Doubting Prayer (1:6-8)
Jesus (Matt. 7:7 f.) had urged the disciples to ask, with the promise that God would answer.
There is a condition attached to the wide-open invitation in James 1:5. “But let him ask in faith,” James adds. By faith James means not a body of doctrine but trust in God, a working confidence in God that leads one to ask and to expect to receive what he asks. It is certain that God does not answer some prayers, at least in the way expected. Some requests ought not to be granted, in fact ought never to be made. Prayer may be very foolish as well as very wise. God does not offer to grant every whim of a spoiled and petulant child. But assuming that one is asking for wisdom, which surely is a proper prayer for anyone to make, even so he may miss it because he does not exercise wisdom in the asking. He must not chill the ardor of his desire by hesitation and doubt. Let him ask, “nothing doubting.”
To doubt is to have a divided mind that draws him two ways, like the poor donkey that starved because he could not choose between the two stacks of hay. Such a man is like a wave of the sea (“Like a cork floating on the wave, now carried towards the shore, now away from it,” Mayor), one of the most transitory things imaginable, driven by the wind and tossed into sea foam (whitecaps) as if blown by a fan or bellows, a veritable “brain storm” of perplexity and indecision.
God does answer prayer, but not the prayer of a man who insults the Giver of whom he asks a favor. Timid faith is quite another thing. That Jesus honored, as in the case of the father who first said, “But if thou canst do any thing” (Mark 9:22). Jesus rebuked him for his “if thou canst.” Then the anxious father cried out: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
There are many difficulties in the way of trust in God today. Science has left many minds groping in the dark without God, feeling after him if haply they may find him, not knowing that he is nigh to each of us. We do not have an absentee God. He can and does hear the cry of his children for help. If SOS can find a response over the wind and the wave to the call of the sinking ship, surely it is not strange that the Father of our spirits will hear our call to him. So it will be, “if ye have faith and doubt not,” almost the very words used by James.
Jesus had to rebuke his disciples for their lack of faith (Matt. 8:26) when they thought they were perishing from wind and wave. And Simon Peter doubted after he began to walk on the water and started at once to sink. “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” says Jesus to Peter (Matt. 14:31). Peter had a divided mind. “Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.” He does not expect anything, and he is not disappointed. What a commentary is this sentence upon the halfhearted praying, the lack of interest, the worldly-minded passive worship of many modern Christians. There is no wrestling with God in prayer for victory.
“Double-minded creature that he is, wavering at every turn” (Moffatt). The double-minded man is like the two-faced man (Mr. Facing Both Ways). Sirach (2:13) speaks of the sinner coming to two paths and being unable to choose. Such a man perishes at the crossroads. Compare James 4:8 for the only other use of the word in the New Testament, though common enough elsewhere. Such indecision goes into duplicity, as Jesus shows about the evil eye and the single eye (Matt. 6:22 f.). It is a miserable life, as anyone knows who leads a double life. The double heart leads to the double life, with its pretended double standard of morals. Clement of Rome says: “Wretched are the double-minded, who doubt in their heart.” No wonder he becomes “unstable in all his ways,” not able to stand in all his goings. He wobbles and finally reels like a drunken man. Such inconstancy winds up in hypocrisy or abandonment to sin.