“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27 KJV
So what does it mean to be “unspotted from the world”?
On the one hand, we read that pure religion is to visit the
fatherless and widows. That seems rather
straight forward. It means to look after
the most vulnerable. It is not an
instruction to “care” from a great distance and with the best of intentions. It is not an invitation to join a cause. It is to visit
the fatherless and widows. And not to
visit them in their neatness and tidiness.
It isn’t to behold their purity and loveliness. It isn’t so that they can do something for
me. It is to visit them in their affliction.
Pure religion is to
enter into the messiness.
I don’t believe that the 2nd part (the part about
staying “unspotted”) is contrary to the 1st part (visiting the most
vulnerable). They are one and the same
thing. So I can’t read this and think
that keeping myself unspotted from the world is the same thing as keeping my
distance from that which is messy. The unspotted
are those who visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. This is the pure religion of the Kingdom of
God that is not of this “world”. Or to
flip things around, the “spotted” are those who don’t visit the afflicted.
The righteous Pharisee keeps himself “unspotted from the world” according
to the ways of the world:
Two men went up to the
temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself
like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists,
unrighteous people, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week: I give a tenth of
everything I get. (Luke 18: 10-12 NET)
This is holiness-as-separateness.
The Pharisee is spotted.
The Pharisee is spotted.
But Jesus is God with us.
His holiness is not like that. His
is a holiness that draws him into the
mess, not away from it. Jesus is the pure religion that is unspotted from the world.
The holiness of “the world” is the type of holiness that
draws one away from the mess and the pain.
The holiness of Jesus, the holiness that characterizes “true religion”,
draws him into the mess and the pain.
His holiness is not diminished.
Rather, in his self-giving love, it is made manifest. It is enhanced.
True, we are not Jesus. So this is not to minimize the complexity of life or our own
fragility. This is not a naive or arrogant self-righteousness that sees itself as the pure gift to all that is less. In the
waiting-for-all-to-be-set-right, that end that we long for but do not know, to follow Jesus is to follow him into the fray. It is to get a little messy. Or at least a recognition ultimate well-being is not tied to the avoidance of messiness. Not
only because this law of love that is the holiness of Jesus that is the
holiness of God beckons us, but because of the metaphysical truth that “no man
is an island”. Fates are intertwined.
Because I’m not separate from some abstract messiness that is “out there”. Not really.
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