In this passage the riches he was condemning were those who robbed their workers, those who killed the innocent and those who in times of violence and slaughter did nothing at all to help those who were the victims of violence. There were not too many middleclass people in James s time. There were the very rich and often the very poor. It is those who have wealth and misuse it that James is condemning. Evil is a mystery.
Evil sometimes defies explanation.
Please God, this gross type of evil is outside the daily experience of most of us. Every one of us has to choose to act out one or two of those alternatives between good and evil. We only have to look at our television sets to see some of the things that happen, to see for example the slaughter in East Timor, that was more recent, to know that evil is a reality. It reminds us too, as the Psalm today does, that for the best of us there is always the danger of presumption, becoming absolutely certain that we are alright whereas in fact things are slipping. The danger that there are hidden faults, not just hidden from other people, but hidden from ourselves, that we become spiritually blind not just to our weakness but also to our evil.