Prejudice has been with us a long, long time. Two thousand years
ago a pastor asked,
”
Suppose someone comes to church dressed in fancy clothes and
expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in
shabby clothes?
”
(James 2:2).
Prejudice has been with us a long, long time. Two thousand years ago a pastor asked, “Suppose someone comes to church dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in shabby clothes?” (James 2:2). Imagine yourself back in the day James wrote this: A guy comes in all decked out in his Brooks Brothers toga with the sash tied in a power knot, Gucci sandals and a Rolex wrist-sundial. Right behind him comes an obviously poor man (no GQ look and no Camelac in the church parking lot). James says the rich guy will be treated well and the poor man will be ignored. I would like to say this mindset is long gone, but you and I know better, because we all occasionally play the game of “favorites.”
James points out that prejudice doesn’t make sense on two levels: It’s stupid and it dishonors God. Here’s how he puts it in verses 5-8, “God chose the poor in the world to be rich with faith and to receive the kingdom God promised to those who love him. But you show no respect to the poor. The rich are always trying to control your lives … Isn’t it the rich who oppress you? This royal law is found in the Scriptures: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” If you obey this law, you are doing right. But if you treat one person as being more important than another, you are sinning. You are guilty of breaking God’s law.”
James is not saying that being wealthy is evil. It’s not money that’s the root of all kinds of evil, but the love of money (1 Tim. 6:10). It’s all about our attitude toward it. This was Jesus’ concern when he told a rich young man to get rid of his wealth (Mark 10). It wasn’t the money that separated him from God, but his making the accumulation of wealth his No. 1 priority (in essence, his god).
Here’s the bottom line: How we relate to other people shows how we relate to God. “If anyone boasts, ‘I love God,’ and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see?” (1 John 4:20).
What are the consequences of being prejudiced? “If you show favoritism, you go against the royal command and stand convicted by it. You can’t pick and choose in these things, specializing in keeping one or two things in God’s law and ignoring others. The same God who said, “Don’t commit adultery,” also said, “Don’t murder.” If you don’t commit adultery but go ahead and murder, do you think your non-adultery will cancel out your murder?” (James 2:9-11).
Here’s James’ reasoning: if you are in jail for stealing and another person is there for committing rape, you both have something in common; regardless of which particular law you broke, the result is the same: You are both separated from the public. The same is true when you break one of God’s laws; regardless of which one you break, the result is the same: You are separated from God. All sins have one thing in common: They damage our relationship with God.
Many of us justify our sins by saying they are minor, but the issue is not one of degree, but of the separation that takes place. “Your iniquities have separated you from God; your sins have hidden his face from you” (Isaiah 59:2). We have tendency to think, “I don’t break any of the “big” Commandments – I’m OK.” But the Bible says the result is still same: Sin damages our relationship with God. We say, “I don’t drink, smoke, cuss, chew or hang around with folks that do … so what if I want to be a little partial toward ‘my kind’ of people …” That way of thinking doesn’t fly with God because we are all the same “kind” of people: the kind God loves and Jesus died for!
