Getting Religion

James 1:26-27

Introduction

Someone comes up to you and asks: “Are you religious?” What do you say? Have you had someones ask you that question? What kind of thoughts went through your head? Perhaps you thought about talking about your connection to a church or your thoughts about God, but were you ready to embrace the label of ‘religious’? Religion has gotten a bad reputation. Here are some quotes that I found:

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” – Seneca

“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” – Karl Marx

“Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.” – Richard Dawkins

These are just a handful of thoughts by some famous people. We find that there are skeptics that sneer at religion and believers who are embarrassed by religion. What is the basis for this reaction.

Some people hate religion out of ignorance. They have heard somewhere about the evils of religion and have embraced that idea without any critical thought. Some people feel good about themselves because they are taking a stand against something, and in this case it is religion.

But there are other people, both skeptics and believers, who have seen some of the problems of religion. Former science fiction writer L. Run Hubbard once said: “If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” He both got rich and started a religion. Even within Christianity, there are plenty examples of where things have gone terribly bad. There are reasons to be concerned and to call out the abuses when they take place. But if car manufacturing got to the point where 50% of car owners were experiencing malfunctions that were leading to serious injuries, we would not conclude that the existence of cars is the problem. We would call for higher standards and demand steps be taken to increase safety.

I know many Christians who say that they are not religious, whether or not they are concerned by the actions of religious folk. They insist that Christianity is not a religion but is a relationship. I have said this myself. I understand what people mean but there is a problem with this. The Cambridge Dictionary defines religions as: “the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or any such system of belief and worship.” Christianity fits that definition. Christianity may be more than a religion but at the very least, it is also a religion.

I try to explain to people that religion is not a dirty word. The word itself is used in the Bible and not as an insult. It actually gives a description of religion that if we took it seriously, I think would go a long way toward providing a vision of religion that is attractive and that we would all want to embrace.

Orphans and Widows

What do you think of when you think of the word ‘religion’? There are three things that come to my mind: 1) rituals and ceremonies, 2) theological beliefs, and 3) rules about what you can’t do. Strangely, when James describes what true religion is supposed to look like, none of these three appears. The first part of the religion that God wants is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”

I need to mention that “orphans and widows” does not mean that the people we help have to fall into one of those two categories. In the Bible, orphans and widows is shorthand for anyone who is marginalized and is facing disadvantages. It is not easy today to be a widow or orphan, even with pensions and social services and foster programs and numerous other supports. Imagine what it was like to be a widow or orphan two thousand years ago when they had none of those things. Widows and orphans happened to be the most obvious examples of people around them who would be in distress. This group could be widened considerably to include people with disabilities, people struggling with mental illness, indigenous people, newcomers to Canada, sexual minorities, and many more. It basically comes down to anyone who faces more challenges than those faced by all of us regardless of our identity. 

But why does God care so much about this? Why suddenly expect that this is to be the centre of our religion? This is not sudden at all. In Isaiah 1, God tells the people that he is sickened by their religious rituals, even though they are the very things he commanded them to offer. The reason their worship is unacceptable is because of what it is missing. God explains it clearly: “Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)

In the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25, Jesus says that those who are acceptable to God are those who help disadvantaged people in their distress. This is exactly what James tells us that true religion is supposed to be.

Ironically, there are those in the Christian church who not only don’t do this, they loudly insist that we shouldn’t be doing this. How can this be? There are two reasons. One is, they claim, is that this contradicts salvation by faith alone. James deals with this elsewhere in this book, when he tells us that faith without works is dead. The other reason, which I think is the main reason, is that they see helping marginalized people as a slippery slope into liberalism. For those who see everything through the lens of a culture war between conservatives and liberals, even following Jesus can be problematic. But we cannot get around the fact that the entire Bible, and not just this passage, emphasizes the importance of caring for marginalized people in their distress.

Avoiding Pollution

I attended a church in my 20s that would not have been interested in the first part of what James taught. They would see it as best as a waste of time and at worst as a distraction from the one thing we are supposed to be doing: evangelism. However, they would have been all over the second part of James teaching: “to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

We were strongly encouraged to separate ourself from the world. The problem was that it was never explained what the world was. All I was offered was a new set of rules. You cannot listen to secular music, you have to listen to Christian music. You cannot watch secular movies, you have to watch Christian movies. You shouldn’t send your children to secular schools, you should send them to Christian schools. There was an entire industry that was putting out Christian versions of pretty much everything that was out there: from exercise videos to clothing. I have no problem with things being Christian-themed, my only question is why are we doing that? I was out with some friends after an evening church service. We were at restaurant, enjoying some appetizers and a baseball game on television. I asked one of the guys who had been a part of this church much longer than I had: “So why are we not allowed to listen to rock music, even if it does not include crude language?” His response was that because it does not explicitly glorify Jesus. I then asked how the baseball game we were watching was glorifying Jesus and he gave me a look that said: “Stop being a troublemaker and follow the rules!” 

What the Bible describes as the world is not about participating in something that is “secular.” What the Bible is doing when it warns us about the world is to avoid the value system of the world. What is that value system? It includes greed, selfishness, wrath, dishonesty, and all sorts of corruption. It all comes down to how people intend to get ahead in life. Some people will try to move forward with hard work, ethical values, and treating people with respect. But that’s the long road. You can get quicker results by doing whatever it takes, cheating the system, taking advantage of people, stepping on whoever we need to, to climb the ladder of success. This is the world’s values and it lures us with promises of quick results. But there is always a cost. What James is teaching here is not a completely different topic than taking care of the marginalized in their distress. The pollution of the world are the practices that put such people in distress. James is telling us to both help those in need and to not be the problem that makes other people’s life so difficult.

Conclusion

Are you ready for some religion? I am not suggesting that what James says in these two verses is all there is to Christianity. We need to believe in God and have faith in Jesus. These things are very important. But once we are connected to God, there is a specific kind of religion that is supposed to be our top priority: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” But shouldn’t we focus on telling people about Jesus and sharing how to go to heaven? The truth is that if we don’t do what James says here, then people are not going to listen to anything else we say. I want you to imagine if the worldwide church, every Christian denomination, fully embraced the religion we have been talking about. I believe that people would really sit up and take notice of what we have to say.