Today’s reading is James 2.
Disciples love their neighbors, rich or poor. Let’s be shocked for a moment. James was writing to poor Christians. The norm at the time of the Bible was for Christians, for the congregation members, to be in the lower class. How tempted they must have been to bring in more wealthy members to give their group a little street cred. Not to mention, how much help those wealthier members might be to the group in need. Yet here we are in modern America and the norm is middle to upper-middle class with a few outliers on either side of that socio-economic class. Not to mention, the underlying idea most modern American Christians have is if we were really faithful, we’ll get wealthier. If we are not careful, we will subtly have some of this very partiality James warns against and not even realize it. It will just seem normal. After all, poor people must be doing something wrong. Right? Not necessarily. The point of this is not that churches need to have benevolence ministries. The point is if the “normal” church is middle to upper-middle class, we might need to take an inventory of ourselves and make sure we really are being impartial as James encouraged. James was worried about Christians telling the poor to stand in certain places in the meeting places. Let’s make sure we aren’t tacitly, subconsciously telling them not to come in at all. Disciple making needs to be impartial. I know I need work on that. How about you?
Tomorrow’s reading is James 3.
Read the Bible 