A thought progression from my journal on March 8th....sitting on a curb in dusty Cairo waiting for a ride....after reading the book of James. It all started in my mind with a simple statement. Simple, yet profound....
”Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for the orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” James 1:27
To me, at this stage of my walk or journey through life, I feel that James was written expressly for Americans/ Westerners... It reeks of challenge for us in the “free world” who have yet to see the irony of this statement, as our “freedom” is often directly related and supported by the slavery and oppression of millions, maybe billions. It is a subversive piece of literature, filled with simple, potent, revolutionary and life changing steps to becoming an authentic Christian in “the eyes of the Father”.
This verse, to me, begs the question, “Is it really freedom if one of it’s main reliance’s is the oppression (or at least repression or indiscretion) of masses of people in the world...and it also should make us wonder if WE are free...or has our society ( as James calls it, “the world”) fooled us into believing that we are free while we build up modern day "pyramids" without stopping to ask, WHY? Clearly, James knows what true freedom is, and it seems as though it is so easy that we have trouble doing it even though this freedom is reiterated over and over again in Scripture...
To defy a system, you must first top submitting to it. We can all so easily become slaves to capitalism and the American Dream. We follow the dangling carrot all of our lives in such a stark and deliberate contrast to The Way (before it was Christianity, it was The Way) we profess to follow. If we could just give it up, we could be free. Money, gold, diamonds, etc only have any value because we put that value on it. Instead of building skills to survive and to help each other live life, we have built a system. We have devoted all of our time to learning a specific skill that serves this system and we rely on these skills to give us money, which in turn we use to get things we need/ want.
We therefor willingly enslave ourselves in this system...in fact, often times we put our entire HOPE in this system, because without the system, our skills are useless... If the system fails, we don’t know how we will survive, because our lives are so engraved in the system, we really have forgotten what real life is.
“If we lose our lives, we will gain them.”.....”If we are poor, we are blessed.”...
If we suffer with the oppressed we free ourselves of the lack of feeling and distance that we have incubated. If we become one with the poor and marginalized, that changes everything....that’s what Jesus did. If we could just stop serving the agendas of Caesar, corporations, and ourselves, we would find time to serve others... After all, isn’t this what is expected of us as followers of The Way? Acts 4:32-35 says, “All the believers were united in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had.The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God’s great blessing was upon them all.There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles for those in need.” In the early Church, they were often accused of being a cult or polygamists because of how genuine they loved each other and shared their lives with each other. This Way they followed really affected the way they lived day to day....not just Sunday to Sunday....
Do we think a day of service or charity is fulfilling these commands? Or could it be that a life of serving and charity is actually just what is says: A life that is permeated with giving and serving and everything that entails. Could that be what it means.... If we could just remover ourselves for a while, or maybe removing the hold that this present world has on us, we might be able to actually imagine another world. A world where we work together, where our focus is others, and where we aren’t always concerned about ourselves because we know that we are all looking out for each other, and the Father is looking over His beloved Church.....but before this can start to come to fruition, we all have to make that choice....the choice to live out a pure and genuine religion....I hesitate to even use the word religion because religion clouts the power of the gospel and God....it puts human rules in front of it....but the Father loves pure and genuine religion. A religion not often seen in this day and age, but a religion that is required and that offers so much more than the current status quo.
“Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works.” James 2:26
Excellent observations and a well-written post. There is also an interesting dichotomy. You (and Jesus) says to rid yourself of worldly things and help others. Isn't it somewhat strange that 'helping others' in many cases is helping them obtain worldly things? For example, your efforts to provide a new roof for the family in South Africa. In your moments of self-sacrifice and reaching out, you provided them with a worldly 'thing'. I'm not sure there is an easy answer for this actually. It's done all the time by missionaries (and others) who are basically providing material goods (and food) in order to help others. I think this has to be done and the dream of many people is the freedom to work hard and to live comfortably. Strange. I know from my own travels that Islam is growing throughout the world in part because they feed the greed before trying to grab the soul. By 'feed the greed' I mean relatively simple things like housing and food. In essence they try to give hope of actually being able to move forward in gaining more 'things'. From there they begin the conversion to Islam.
ReplyDeleteI do think that their is an easy answer....but its all a balance...there is a difference between necessity and greed. We live in a material world....everything we breath, consume, see, is material... so obviously there is a total material need. A huge part of us is material being....As for the Islam thing, I dont have too much experience, just the immersion in Cairo, which is very divided between liberal and conservative islam....I think we all struggle to find a balance with anything in life. "too much of a good thing" really comes to mind often. Material things arent bad until you are surrounded by ammenities and millions around you dont even have the material necessities to survive.... but yah, it was just something i was thinking about after reading some scripture.....thanks for the compliment though Uncle Joe!
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