James 1:26
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
When you hear or read the word “religion”, what kinds of images come to mind?
Do you think of soaring cathedrals like Notre Dame in Paris, or St. Peter’s in Rome?
Do you think of listening to a sermon and singing hymns?
Do you think of lighting candles and kneeling in prayer?
Do you think of religious riots and the violence incited by religious hatred?
James says God thinks of religion like this:
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
How interesting! How surprising!
Is James saying that churches, steeples, sanctuaries and rituals aren’t important? No!
What he is saying is that any religion or religious activity that fails to produce compassionate care for others or that fails to result in a growing understanding of personal holiness is not religion at all.
One of the critiques I have heard aimed at “organized religion” is that churches are like “country clubs” in that they offer benefits only to those who are members; to those who are inside the club.
One of the critiques I have heard aimed at individual Christians is, “He (or she) is a hypocrite; he goes to church and acts all religious on Sunday but is just like the rest of us the rest of the week!”
James is challenging us as followers of Jesus to be the answer to both kinds of criticism!
He says that if we want to please God with our worship (what James calls “pure religion”); if we want to please God as his church; and if we want to demonstrate to the world the character of the God we worship, we are to “look after orphans and widows in their distress.” This directive is quite clear: we are to care for those who cannot care for themselves. In the ancient world “widows and orphans” would have been among the most helpless members of society. When the husband/father was gone those left behind had little protection or access to economic support. James is saying that, as followers of Jesus, we are to exist for more than our own existence. We are to care about more than our own little personal “kingdoms.” And the church is to exist not for itself but for the world.
The second directive is much more difficult to both understand and follow. James says that if we want to please God in our personal lives we are to “keep (ourselves) from being polluted by the world.”
To James “the world” was that which stood in opposition to God. The world was full of temptations and values that are contrary to the holiness and purity to which we are called as God’s people. We get that.
But we also live in the world! We go to work and school every day; we are surrounded by the world on all sides; so how do we keep from being “polluted” by the world?
This past summer Pastor Jeff, Pastor Bruce and I took a 24 hour retreat to a Trappist Monastery in Dubuque, Iowa. We were just wanting to get away from our day-to-day responsibilities for a time of refreshment, but in the process we learned something about the monks who still live and work at this 150 year old monastery. They believe they are called by God to separate themselves from the world in order to focus on purity, prayer and worship. They gather for prayer 8 times a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, including a service called “vigils” at 3:30 am every morning. Is that what James is suggesting we all do? Are we to remove ourselves from the world?
While this may be the calling for the monks in Iowa, I don’t think that’s what James is talking about. He says not that we are to remove ourselves from the world, but rather that we are to keep ourselves from being polluted by it.
When Jesus prayed for his followers in John 17, he said it this way:
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. (John 17:15-18)
We keep from becoming polluted by the world not by removing ourselves form it, but through the protection of the truth of God’s word.
There is an old ad campaign for “American Express” credit cards that says, “Don’t leave home without it.” I think we can apply that phrase to our calling as followers of Jesus. When we head out into a world that is full of pollution, “Don’t leave home without Christ; don’t leave home without his word; don’t leave home without the gospel.”
Brian Coffey
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