Pharisaism cannot be mollified. Paul, nor Jesus, ever makes excuses for it. Pharisaic teaching and practice are destructive.

A friend of mine says, "Leadership is easy when things are easy. But real leadership happens when things are difficult."

It is in those challenging times that the real heart of the leader becomes evident. All sorts of airs can be put on when everyone is getting along, the production is going strong, relationships are amicable.

Scripture is full of twists and turns that help us navigate the complexities of our world. One such twist is how Scripture handles "turning the other cheek" (Matthew 5:39). Do we with toxic leaders?

One of the most damaging things to an organization is a leader who is a hypocrite. The Oxford Dictionary defines hypocrisy as the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

In this four-part series on the book of James I have sought to look into how the brother of Jesus handles the evil of abusive behavior and motives. This final installment looks at how James wraps up his theme. It is very helpful in providing the prescription for leaders seeking to turn from abusiveness.

In the American church we have a determined focus on desires for wrongful sex, but James—the writer of the book by that name in the New Testament—has a distinctively different focus: broken relationships. He zeros in on fights of which there are many between a toxic leader and his/her subordinates.

In this second look at the book of James, we will consider the center of toxic leadership. As was noted in part one of this series, much teaching in leadership circles looks at the outward behavior of the leader as the standard. But that isn't the standard for Christians.

The book of James has profound insights on oppressive leadership, hypocrisy, and the power of words in Christian contexts. This is the first in a series on James and oppression.