Living As If God Exists (Because He Does)Sýnishorn

PURE AND UNDEFILED RELIGION

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at promoting stories that deny God. While we may not affirm these stories as true when we hear them, we often affirm with our actions. We become doers of a word that runs counter to God’s word. As Christians, we are to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (1:22). When we hear without doing we deceive ourselves. In a broken world, there is no shortage of people, platforms, or systems to reinforce our self-deception.

Social media platforms, for instance, have little interest in forming us into people who are “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Jam 1:19). Instead, such platforms need us to like, comment, share, and react without much thought. They benefit from our anger because, while “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God,” it does help stories spread in a digital world. An unbridled tongue, or unbridled thumbs in this digital age, demonstrates that we are deceiving ourselves and that our “religion is worthless” (1:26).

Rather than putting “away filthiness and rampant wickedness” (1:21), many digital platforms put it on display for us and make it easy to find content that hinders us from receiving “with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (1:21). We have ample opportunity to forget what we look like after seeing our reflection in the mirror of God’s word (1:23-24)

James highlights the need for our faith to encompass all of who we are. Reading, hearing, and knowing is not enough. We have to act and speak in ways that reflect our perseverance (1:25-27). We have to live as if God exists because he actually does. Without action, our faith is dead (2:14-25).

James cautions against the self-deceptive notion of thinking we are religious while acting in irreligious ways (1:26). “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father” is evident in our actions (1:27). As we care for the vulnerable among us and remain unstained by the world, we demonstrate that we are not only hearers of God’s word, but doers.

As the world seeks to form us into people who will live out stories that deny God, may we show ourselves to be women and men committed to avoiding self-deception by practicing pure and undefiled religion.