Stay on the Road

The scriptures referred to are James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

When driving on US-1 I have seen people who were obviously having trouble staying in their lane. They would drift over the line on the right which separates the road from the shoulder and which is sometimes the bike lane. Or they might drift to the left over the line marking the boundary of the northbound and southbound lanes. If the person does this too often, causing me to suspect they are impaired, I call 911 and report their reckless driving, hoping a patrol car would come and pull them over and see if they were drunk or high or just sleepy. Or playing with their phone. But you would think it odd if I said it was okay to drive over either the line on the right or the line on the left. That's a good way to end up in the mangroves or in the water. Or hit someone head-on. The correct way to drive is to stay between the lines. That's why they are there.

The Bible says that what is morally good lies between two sinful or foolish alternatives. Right after restating the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, Moses says,“So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.” (Deuteronomy 5:32) And this instruction that in following God you can err by going too far to one side or the opposite is repeated several times. (Deuteronomy 17: 11, 20; 28:14; Joshua 1:7; 23:6; Proverbs 4:27) Yet people seem to have trouble with the concept that in most things the morally correct answer lies between the two extreme versions. They see everything as binary. If you are not right wing, you are left wing. If you are not left wing, you are right wing. If you support the police, you must be against Black Lives Matter. If you Support Black Lives Matter, you must be against the police. If you support science, you must be against religion. If you support religion, you must be against science. For some people, you can't possibly support both or see some truth on both sides and thus find an balanced view. No, one must be absolutely wrong and the other unquestionably right. One is 100% pure and the other utterly impure.

This idea that everything is black and white is Mickey Mouse! That is, like the original Mickey Mouse who was drawn in black and white with no shading. If you think reality is like a 1928 cartoon, then you will have trouble seeing the world as it is: with color and depth. That's why God gave us 2 eyes so we can see depth and gave us the ability to distinguish at least 1 million colors. That allows us to see threats, like venomous snakes given away by their colors and patterns, but also useful things, like a fruit that is ripe and ready to eat. God also gave us more visual acuity than, say, the rat or the horse or anything with compound eyes. So we can distinguish between wild cherries and poisonous buckthorn fruit or the leaves of a grapevine and those of a Virginia Creeper. Our eyes also allow us to see all the beauty of God's creation, something not possible if you see only in black and white.

This is not to say that there aren't things that are good and things that are bad. It just means you need to really observe and analyze things which are submitted as unalloyed examples of one or the other. You need to remember that going too far in one direction can make something good into something bad. Eating is good. Eating too much is not but neither is eating too little. It is important to make these distinctions. And in today's lectionary Jesus and his brother James make some important distinctions in matters of morality.

The letter of James is the closest thing the New Testament has to wisdom literature. Like the book of Proverbs, James is full of good advice. And in today's passage he says something that is very relevant to Christians today. “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” Then as now there were churchgoers who talked a good game—knew the scriptures, knew the gospel, knew all the right words—but weren't putting what they knew into practice. They were orthodox in their beliefs but not in their behavior.

We've all seen people whose words express one set of values and whose deeds express a different set. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and are given by their Creator rights that can't be taken away. Yet he owned slaves and even fathered 6 children on one, Sally Hemmings, herself the offspring of Jefferson's father-in-law and a slave, making her the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife. Jefferson only freed 2 slaves during his life, both brothers of Sally. In his will he freed all of her children but not the hundreds of other slaves he owned. He didn't even free Sally. That fell to Jefferson's daughter, Sally's niece. Why didn't Jefferson put his principles into action?

Ravi Zacharias was a brilliant apologist for the Christian faith. After his death in 2020, it came out that that he had sexually abused multiple women. His ministry hired a law firm which verified the women's claims, including finding numerous explicit photos on his computer. The ministry apologized to the women and said it would remove his name from their organization. His denomination posthumously revoked his ordination. His publisher will no longer offer his books. And so the actions of this apologist now give unbelievers a reason to scoff at his words.

But I don't think that James is talking only about hypocrisy, saying one thing and doing the opposite. I think he is also addressing the problem of Christians who say they approve of things like love and justice and grace and generosity but who are not actually manifesting these things. James famously said that faith, unaccompanied by actions, is dead, lying motionless like a corpse. (James 2:17) For Christians there needs to be consistency between what you believe, what you say and what you actually do.

A survey in 2007 by the Barna Group found that while born again Christians were more likely to volunteer at their church they were no more likely than the average American to help the poor or homeless. This despite the hundreds of times the Bible mentions our duty to the poor. And as a group, born again Christians were the least likely to recycle. This despite their supposed love of Genesis 1 and 2 where God creates the earth. He also creates humanity to garden it, not to turn it into a big landfill.

As James sees it, there are two hallmarks of truly religious Christians: that they take care of widows and orphans and that they keep themselves uncontaminated by the world. In other words, Christian morality has 2 parts: helping others and keeping one's ethical integrity, rather than following the way of the world. Let's look at these in more detail.

Widows and orphans (or more commonly, the fatherless) are Biblical shorthand for those occupying the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder in society. In a patriarchal culture, women without men and children without fathers were most likely to be poor. And that's still true today. The group most likely to be poor in America is children under 18, followed by women, especially women who are single parents. The Bible also talks of treating the blind, the deaf and the lame properly. Yet more than a quarter of people with disabilities are living in poverty, more than twice the percentage of those without disabilities who are poor. Speaking to Israel, God says, “There should not be any poor among you...” (Deuteronomy 15:4) But God is a realist and allows that there will be poor among his people. So he says, “If a fellow Israelite from one of your villages in the land the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive to his impoverished condition. Instead, you must be sure to open your hand to him and generously lend him whatever he needs.” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8, NET) Later James has some choice words about favoring the rich over the poor and about those who live in luxury while cheating the working man. It's odd how many people think that the US is a Christian nation and yet feel that we shouldn't do too much to help the poor!

But if those people veer too far to the right of the road, others veer too far to the left. James not only supports what we call social justice but also personal morality. We need to be unstained by the world. And while he doesn't spell out exactly what he means by this, reading his letter gives you a good picture. The world is place where the powerful prey on the powerless. (5:1-6) It's a place of quarreling and fighting motivated by desires and greed and envy and selfish ambition. (3:14; 4:1-3) The world is full of harmful talk (3:1-13) and boasting (4:16) and arrogance (4:6). The Christian should live according to God's wisdom, which is “first pure, then peace-loving, discerning, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” (3:17, my translation) That helps others, too. Just as maintaining my car can prevent me from being a hazard to others on the road, a Christian needs to keep himself or herself in good moral and spiritual condition.

But this means more than just washing your car and getting it detailed. The internal problems are what will cause you trouble. In our passage from Mark, Jesus is dealing with critics who fault his disciples for not following their rituals, like elaborate hand washing. I don't think that Jesus is saying that clean hands are bad but rather he is pointing out that it is not the external things that defile someone spiritually. And, though he doesn't put it this way, you wouldn't excuse a serial killer because he washed up after dismembering his victims, would you? Jesus draws a distinction between ritual purity and moral purity. For example, being able to conduct a mass properly doesn't exclude someone from being a sexual predator.

Unfortunately, people often fixate on how things appear to them. They think that if something looks good it must be good. This applies even to how people look. In studies little kids were shown pictures of people they had never met and asked what kind of people they thought they were. Good looking people were judged to be more trustworthy, more competent and nicer than people with average or below average looks. And sadly, many adults do not learn what Shakespeare said 400 years ago: “There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.” (Macbeth, Act 1, scene 4) Con artists rely on that. Ted Bundy relied on that. Again, as Shakespeare said, “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5)

That's why Jesus said, “You will recognize them by their fruit.” (Matthew 7:16) What a person does is a truer reflection of who they are than their looks or their words. The right or wrong they do in private is more important than the religious rituals or societal niceties they observe in public in order to look good.

So to sum up, James tells us that on the one hand mere words are not enough. Again one of Shakespeare's villains, trying to pray, says, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to heaven go.” (Hamlet, Act 3, scene 3) And the Bard pointed out, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” (The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, scene 3) On the other hand, James' brother Jesus observes that mere religious correctness is not enough. Clean hands don't indicate a clean heart.

If we leave it there, that's the opposite of good news. Who can clean up a heart mucked up by sin? As Jesus says, “This is impossible for mere humans, but not for God; all things are possible for God.” (Mark 10:27) We need to open up the hood and let God's Spirit get to work on overhauling our engine. He needs to clean out the gunk and maybe even replace some old parts with newer better ones. As Paul says, “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) God wants to turn our conch cruiser of a self into something reliable.

He especially wants to fix the alignment and the steering, so that we don't veer off of his path to either the left or the right. He doesn't want us so focused on personal responsibility that we neglect social justice, nor be so intent on social justice that we let personal morality slide. He doesn't want us to neglect our religious duties but he doesn't want us to think they are a substitute for doing what is right for others or for ourselves. As Jesus said, how are we to get the speck out of our sibling's eye if we ignore the 2 by 4 in our own? (Matthew 7:3)

The truth is found between the distortions and lies that sprout up on either side of it. The right thing to do is found between the extremes of too much and too little. The road to courage is between cowardice on the one hand and recklessness on the other. The road to faith is found between distrust and complacent familiarity. The road to hope avoids the pitfalls of both despair and unsupported optimism. And the road to love veers neither into neglect nor into uncritical obsession. Ultimately what is not the high road falls away on either side as we follow the path Jesus has trod, which leads us to God, from whose height we can see everything clearly.