James 2

Again, James hits it hard in this second chapter. He busts right out talking about favoritism. I think it's easy sometimes to dismiss this one. We can often think we would never treat others differently. I mean this is America, right? But what about the rich that live right inside our home. I treat me pretty nicely. I tend to be my favorite.

I can't help but notice his tie-in to Jesus' command to love others as we love ourselves. And if you have read Crazy Love by Francis Chan, you know where I'm going. (If you haven't, I just bought 10 new copies today, and one's waiting on my mantel with your name on it!) That 50% challenge pops up at us yet again. Francis says (he told me just to call him that) that when he reads the "love your neighbor as yourself" thing, He believes Jesus meant it literally. Literally love others just as much as you love yourself, so spend as much on them as you do on yourself. That means 50/50. And in Jesus' story right after His quote that illustrates who our neighbor is and isn't, it is the poor, wounded, helpless, outcast, etc. So I'm confronted with that again. Brannon and I are still working out how we can live that way.

The second half of the chapter demands a resolution about it though. Faith isn't a creed, it's a deed. As a matter of fact, in addition to having an active faith to please God (like Hebrews 11:6 requires), it's also the only way we can earn influence over others. We can only earn moral authority over others when our creed and deed line up. That's probably the number one obstacle to us evangelizing our nation. We have no moral authority. Because in most instances, the world sees a Church with a dislocated deed and creed. If aren't willing to live like we say we believe, then why on earth would they want to join our group? The free pens? The comfy chairs?

I recently listened to Andy Stanley talk about this moral authority issue and it really clicked with me. I'll go over it some more by itself, but let's look at ourselves. Let's ask ourselves: How's my faith/works alignment looking? How's my moral authority? If I weren't already me, would I want to become me? If I weren't already following Christ, would I choose to become the kind of Christian that I currently am? Would my own witness be enough to convert me?

Hmmm. You may not want to comment about that. You can just click the "hmmm" box for today.