QFD | Treasured - Entry 6: The Illusion of Control

Treasured | ENTRY 6: The Illusion of Control

When Money Makes Us Believe We Are in Charge

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." —James 4:13–17 (ESV)

James does not open with a rebuke. He opens with a quotation.

"Come now, you who say..."

He's been listening. He's heard how we talk—how we plan, how we project, how we speak about tomorrow as if it belongs to us. And what he hears is not wisdom. It's arrogance dressed in spreadsheets.

"Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit."

Notice the verbs. We will go. We will spend. We will trade. We will make a profit. Four declarations. No conditions. No contingency. No God.

This is not a prayer. It's a press release.

And James calls it evil.

That word needs to sit with us. Evil.

Not unwise. Not shortsighted. Not even prideful in some mild, forgivable sense. James says this kind of speech—this assumption of control over outcomes we cannot command—is boasting in arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

That's a harder word than we want it to be.

Because most of us recognize ourselves in that quotation. We've said those words, or words like them. We've built projections and timelines and contingency funds, and somewhere in the building we stopped asking whether God was in it. We just assumed we were supposed to figure it out. That's what responsible people do.

But James isn't rebuking planning. He's rebuking planners who forget they are mist.

"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes."

The Greek word is atmis—vapor, breath, steam rising off a cup and gone before you can name it. James reaches for the most transient image available to describe human existence. Not a candle (which at least burns for a while). Not a flower (which at least blooms before it fades). A mist. Here, then not.

This is not pessimism. It's proportion.

The problem with control is not that it's wicked in itself. The problem is that it's exercised by vapor. We speak with the confidence of permanence while possessing the substance of steam. And that gap—between how we talk and what we are—is where arrogance lives.

Money makes the gap worse.

Money lets the mist believe it's marble.

We all know someone—perhaps it's us—who checks the account one more time before bed. Not because anything has changed. Not because there's a crisis. Just... to know. To see the number. To feel, for a moment, that things are in order.

We know the person who runs the forecast again, adjusting variables that don't need adjusting, building margins into margins, as if enough calculation could guarantee peace. The spreadsheet becomes a ritual. The projection becomes a prayer—except it's addressed to no one. It's just repetition in search of certainty.

We know the one who lies awake doing math in the dark. How many months could we last if this happened? What if that happened? The scenarios multiply. The body is tired but the mind won't stop running numbers, as if vigilance itself could ward off disaster.

None of this feels sinful. Most of it feels responsible.

But beneath the responsibility, something else is happening. The heart is trying to secure what cannot be secured. The soul is attempting to outplan its own contingency. And God is quietly absent from the calculation—not rejected, just... unneeded. Unnecessary to the formula.

This is the shape of control when money is its instrument. It doesn't look like rebellion. It looks like prudence. But it functions as a quiet declaration of independence: I will handle this. I will figure this out. I will make sure nothing goes wrong.

And James, who has been listening, calls it what it is.

James gives a command. It's easy to miss because it comes in the form of an alternative, but it's no less binding:

"Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'"

Instead you ought to say.

This is not a suggestion. It's an apostolic directive. And the directive is about speech—about the actual words we use when we talk about tomorrow. James isn't commanding an internal attitude adjustment. He's commanding a verbal habit. A ritual of contingency. A regular, out-loud acknowledgment that we are not in charge.

If the Lord wills.

Our grandparents said it without thinking. "Lord willing, we'll be there Sunday." "If the Lord allows, we'll plant in March." It wasn't superstition. It was how people who believed in providence talked about tomorrow. Mist remembering it was mist.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped. We plan in absolutes now. Our calendars assume tomorrow. And slowly, without noticing, we become the people James overheard—boasting in arrogance, speaking of tomorrow as if it were ours to command.

Jesus told a story about a man who mastered this kind of planning.

"The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry."' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'" —Luke 12:16–20 (ESV)

The rich man's sin was not wealth. It was soliloquy.

Count the first-person pronouns: I... my... I... I... my... I... my... my... I... my.

There's no prayer in this passage. No consultation. No "if the Lord wills." Just a man talking to his own soul about his own plans for his own stuff—and then God interrupts with a single word: Fool. The word is aphron—without phren, without mind, without sense. The rich man thought he was being sensible. He was building bigger barns. He was planning for retirement. He was securing his future.

But he forgot he was mist.

And that night, the mist vanished.

Control is not the same as stewardship.

Stewardship asks, "What has God entrusted to me, and how can I be faithful with it?"

Control asks, "How can I arrange outcomes so that I don't have to depend on anyone—including God?"

Stewardship holds loosely. Control grips tightly. Stewardship remains interruptible. Control resents interruption. Stewardship plans and prays. Control plans and presumes.

The difference often looks small from the outside. Two people may have the same savings account, the same insurance policy, the same retirement fund. But one has written "Lord Willing" in the margin—if only in their heart—and the other has not.

God sees the margin.

The Psalmist understood this:

"Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep." —Psalm 127:1–2 (ESV)

Three times: in vain, in vain, in vain.

The builders labor. The watchmen wake. The anxious toil from dawn to dark. And none of it secures anything—unless the LORD is in it.

This is not an argument against building or watching or working. It's an argument against the illusion that these activities, in themselves, produce safety. They don't. They can't. The mist cannot make itself marble no matter how early it rises.

But notice where the Psalm lands: "He gives to his beloved sleep."

Sleep is the posture of trust. You cannot sleep and grip at the same time. To sleep is to release—to say, with your body, "I am not in charge tonight. Someone else is watching."

The person who trusts the LORD can close their eyes. The person addicted to control cannot.

There is a kind of exhaustion that spreadsheets produce. Not physical tiredness, but the weariness of carrying what was never meant to be carried. The person who must control outcomes has no sabbath rest. Every variable is a potential threat. Every unknown is an enemy. Rest becomes impossible because rest requires release, and release is precisely what control cannot permit.

We see it in families where money is managed with white knuckles—where generosity feels dangerous, where giving requires justification, where every expenditure must be defended against some future catastrophe that may never come. The money is there, but it brings no peace. It funds anxiety rather than relieving it.

We see it in the Christian who gives regularly but cannot give beyond the routine without fear. The usual amount is duty; anything more feels reckless. And somewhere beneath the calculation is a theology of scarcity that contradicts the God of abundance. The Lord who clothes lilies and feeds sparrows is affirmed on Sunday and quietly doubted on Monday when the bills come due.

We see it in the aging saint who has spent a lifetime accumulating and now cannot imagine releasing. The nest egg has become an idol—not because it's large, but because it's necessary. The soul has grown around it like a tree around a fence post. To remove it now would tear something vital.

These are not wicked people. They are often the most responsible people in the room. But responsibility has become a disguise for something else: the refusal to be dependent, the insistence on self-secured outcomes, the quiet conviction that God helps those who help themselves—a phrase, notably, that appears nowhere in Scripture.

What does this mean for money?

It means your savings account is not a sovereignty account. It means your financial plan is a hope, not a guarantee. It means the margin you've built is real and also provisional—held in place by a God who may, at any moment, redirect it for purposes you didn't foresee.

This is not an argument against saving. The Proverbs commend the ant for storing up in summer (Prov. 6:6–8). Planning is wise. But planning without "if the Lord wills" is not wisdom—it's arrogance. And James says all such arrogance is evil.

The line between wisdom and arrogance is not the amount you've saved. It's the posture with which you hold it.

James ends with a warning that unsettles every careful reader:

"So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."

He's talking about the command he just gave. You now know you ought to say, "If the Lord wills." You now know that speaking of tomorrow in absolutes is arrogance. You now know that the boasting you didn't realize was boasting is, in fact, evil.

So do it differently.

Say the words. Adopt the habit. Let your speech be shaped by your mortality and by your God. And when the old reflex rises—when you catch yourself talking about tomorrow as if it belongs to you—repent, and say it again: If the Lord wills.

Control promises safety.

It cannot deliver.

Only God can hold what happens next—and He has not invited you to hold it with Him. He has invited you to trust Him. To plan in pencil. To build with open hands. To work hard and sleep well, because the Lord watches over the city and you do not have to.

You are mist. But when He becomes your treasure, you discover you were already His. And that is more secure than anything control could ever offer.