God-pleasing religion

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 (James 1:27).

A former missionary to India once told of an experience she had there in caring for a critically ill man. She had needed help in getting this person to a hospital, so she approached two "holy men" who were sitting nearby, intoning their devotions. She said that she would never forget the fire of resentment that blazed up in the eyes of one of these men as he replied: "We? We are holy men. We never do anything for anyone."

What a sad and distorted concept of holiness. This kind of thinking reflects a holiness of "purging". People purge themselves of stress through steam baths, purge themselves of negative thoughts through meditation. Purging is done to free yourself from the things in your life that make you unhealthy.

The problem with improving yourself through purging is that it isolates you. Steam baths and meditation will not free you from stress and negative thoughts if you are in the company of someone who is needy or a complainer. To achieve your self-improvement goals by purging, it is best that you be by yourself.

But living alone in a quest for inner perfection does not meet God’s standards for holy living. Through James our Lord tells us, 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. From God’s perspective, godly living involves two things: we are to keep ourselves pure of being polluted by this evil world that we live in, but we also are expected to come to the aid of those people who are dying from the pollution of sin.

There is only one antidote for sin-sickness: forgiveness from Jesus, the Son of God. Only His forgiveness gives us true freedom from dying in the pollution of sin. And what makes this especially wonderful is that Jesus gives us this cure for free—we don’t have to purge ourselves, Jesus does it for us at our request! Nor does this cure isolate us; since Jesus has done the work of purging us from sin, we can devote our energy to taking His offer of help to others.