On favouring the poor

Did you know that the Bible repeatedly forbids favouring the poor?

Well, all right, just twice that I can see.  In Exodus 23 God's people are forbidden to "be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit"; and in Leviticus 19 Israel's judges are warned against being "partial to the poor".  Of course, in the very near context of both these sayings there are prohibitions against favouring the rich, being intimated by the powerful, or taking a bribe.  Perhaps the overall attitude is best summed up in Deuteronomy 1:17:  "You shall not be partial in judgement.  You shall hear the small and the great alike."

The majority concern in Holy Scripture, which recurs in the NT at places like James 2, is the temptation to show partiality towards the rich and powerful.  The reasoning behind this is obvious: these are the people who might be able to reward you for your unwarranted favour, or indeed to harm you if you don't show them favour.  Human nature being what it is, the temptation to pre-judge in favour of the great is always strong.

But the other stream is also there, founded in the reality that our God is a god of truth, judging impartially.  Because this is his character, his people are to show the same equal regard for the privileged and the destitute, the powerful and the weak.

I mention this because I'm a little concerned that some Christians, passionate for justice, are accepting the world's (or at least, the Western-liberal-leftish) definition of what justice is; in particular, the idea that justice means favouring the weak, or pre-judging in favour of the powerless.  That isn't what justice is.  Where there are systemic prejudices preventing particular groups from justice, that is something we have to speak against and strenuously combat.  But the answer isn't to invest those disempowered groups with an automatic (and therefore necessarily imaginary) righteousness.

Now all this is about a judicial context in Israel.  But God is still the same now, and his character is still the same, and he rules his Church.  That means that in local church life and in Christian interaction with society there should be a concern for impartiality, and therefore a rejection of intersectionality, at least as it is applied today as a practical programme (as a framework for analysis, it remains a helpful tool imo).

Or, in other words, when we say 'justice', let's make sure our idea of what that means and our picture of what it looks like derive from Scripture and not any other piece of philosophical or political discourse.

The word is a mirror

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I have wondered in the past how this passage (James 1:22-25) is meant to work.  Maybe I'm just slow.  Being accustomed philosophically to think of being and doing as two separate things, and being accustomed theologically to think of Law and Gospel as rather distinct, I found James' illustration baffling.  How is hearing the word, which in this context seems to be primarily about hearing God's commandments, like looking in a mirror?  Why is the person who doesn't do what he hears like someone who forgets the look of his own face?  What is going on here?

So, I think I've been baffled by this because I've been reading James as if he weren't a Christian, which is a ludicrous thing to do.  James is a Christian, and that means a particular way of reading the commands of God.  Here's how I think it works.

When we read God's commandments, we are not just looking at an abstract list of required or forbidden behaviours.  We are looking at a description of Christ, and what it means and looks like to live in Christ.  The perfect law of God, the law of liberty, shows us what it is like to be free, what it is like to live to God.  In other words, it shows us Christ, and it shows us our true selves as we are elected in Christ to live in him.  When we hear the word, we see ourselves as we are in Christ.  So if we fail to be doers of the word - if we neglect to let what we hear become active in our lives - we are like those who have been shown their true identity and yet forget it instantly.

Imagine there is only one true mirror in the world.  Oh, there are mirrors everywhere in this imaginary world, but all except this one true mirror are like fun house mirrors.  Every other mirror distorts, and only the one will show you what you really look like.  If you look in a bent mirror and conclude that you are absurdly thin, you might increase your diet; or of course if you look in a mirror that makes you look very fat, you might cut down on the old doughnuts.  But if neither of those mirrors is telling you the truth, your behaviour will be inappropriate (and harmful!)  Only the true mirror will help, and it will be important to remember what you saw there when you are confronted by the warped mirrors that fill the world.

Only the word of God - and let's be explicit, that means Jesus Christ, in whom God's Law and Gospel find their perfect unity - will tell you what you are really like.  Every other 'mirror', whether it be the mirror of other people's opinions, or of the prevailing philosophy and anthropology, or your own self-assessment, or even the record of your life to date - all of these are wildly inaccurate.  You are not, really, the person you seem to be to others or to yourself.  In the final analysis - and let's be explicit again, that means Jesus Christ, as the final measure of every man - you are who God calls you to be in Christ.  Trust this mirror, says James, and behave appropriately.

Counting on it

Real faith is more than just knowing or even believing that something is true.  After all, even the demons are perfect monotheists.  Real faith means counting on it.  It means that this faith becomes a real factor in life, decisions, actions.  Faith - trust - is not something that can be put on one side of life in general, so that it occupies a more or less watertight compartment.  In so far as it is real, faith becomes a factor in life and shapes everything around it.

Isn't this what Abraham found as he climbed the bitter slope of Moriah?

-Hey, Abraham, do you believe that God can raise the dead?

What would he have said as he bound his son - his only son, whom he loved - to the altar they had built together?

-Believe it?  I'm counting on it!

That is why faith will always have more than a hint of desperation about it.  Faith actively eschews - despairs of - other more obvious, more ethical, more strategic, more sensible ways of getting things done.  It walks away from them, because faith is counting on something else - the power and promise of God.

That is why faith is not just believing, for example, that God answers prayer.  Faith is counting on God's promise to answer, and that means venturing something.  Putting it all in his hands.  Faith is putting yourself in a position from which if God proves false to his promises, or lacks power, or will not move...  then you will fall.  It is the precipice, and yet at the same time it is the road.  Immense daring, and yet also just ordinary life.  Dangerous, but absolutely safe.

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the life of faith is that so much of it simply involves counting on God to be faithful to me even when I don't count on him.  That looks like the prayer of repentance, the perseverance in getting up and rededicating ourselves to his service every day even though we failed yesterday and will fail again today.  Neither so terrible nor so rewarding as Moriah - but I guess Abraham had plenty of those days too.

Faith always shows itself in works - works that make no sense without faith - just because that is what trust means.  It means acting as if the Other Person is trustworthy.