pure and faultless religion

i know a lot of "religious" people. in some ways i am proud to be one of them, but in others i am not. james tells us that "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."

i think if we do a good job of heeding the first part of that verse, we won't have much trouble with the second part. learning to see and care for, people on the margins of our society, tends to work against the "pollution of our world."

jeremiah 7 proclaims that god did not give us commands about sacrifices and burnt offerings, but rather he gave us the command to obey god. god is telling us through the prophet, he wants nothing to due with our "religious acts" if we are not embodying the way of our king. jesus echoes these words in matthew 25 with his parable of the sheep and the goats.

i once heard a preacher say, "get the people right, get the scriptures right. get the people wrong, get the scriptures wrong." so often we claim to know what the scriptures say, with little change in our lives. we may "believe" all the right things, but we have missed the truth behind the scriptures. the scriptures scream for justice and reconciliation, while our institutions scream to "just believe right."

james goes on in chapter 2, to remind us "we can't fake what we believe." he says, "faith without works, is dead." he claims we should show others what we believe, by the life we live. what if we all took this approach to witnessing for the gospel? what if we learned to "shut up" and let our lives do the talking? i am betting, not much would be said. we would witness to the fact, we live in much the same way as the rest of the world. we trust in our money, jobs and status in much the same way as the pagans we judged worthy of hell do - while proclaiming the good news of jesus!

may our lives proclaim the good news of jesus. may our lives bear witness to a god, who came down to rescue us from our sin, and mark out the "better way."