Religion

We just read about “worthless” religion yesterday.

Now we read this last verse in James 1: 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.

There are going to be those in our neighborhood, churches, and families who are without fathers biologically, and without fathers spiritually.  There are women who have lost their husbands physically due to death, and others due to divorce.  They are all around us, and it’s our responsibility and honor to “look after” them.

And besides that, we are to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world.  Remember those thoughts we mentioned yesterday, thought that self-destruct?  That’s pollution, and it wreaks. 

If we say we know God, and God is love, yet we don’t present this loving Father to those who need Him – our religion is polluted – and it stinks.

This verse says God accepts our religion as pure and faultless when we do these things of caring for those who’ve been abandoned or suffered loss, and when we keep our hearts in tune and our tongues in check.

Are we sure we want this pure, faultless “religion?” It takes some action, along with our faith.  And to stay unpolluted requires some clean air to blow away the filth.  

Maybe if more of us had this kind of religion, the world would want some of it too.