Life Hacks (Part 4): Valuing Everybody

So James chapter 2 begins with a very simple statement.

James 2 · chapter mention

Here's how the NIV translates it.

It says, My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, must not show favoritism.

So the simple statement is if you're a follower of Jesus, if you claim to be somebody who has any kind of relationship with God, then favoritism should not be part of your life.

Here's how David Bentley Hart translates it.

He says that we should live without any respect of persons.

The New English Bible put it this way: we must never show snobbery.

The Phillips translation said, don't ever combine snobbery with faith.

The message, which is really a paraphrase, says, Don't let public opinion influence how you live out your faith.

And then the New Living translation put it this way: it's in the form of a question.

How can you claim that you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others?

And what all of those are based on is the Greek text.

And the Greek text says that to show favoritism is basically to judge by the face.

In other words, what favoritism is, is not necessarily snobbery, but it's to say, I'm only accounting for the obvious kind of face things, not anything that would be more substantial.

And so what we have here is a very simple, straightforward command that this text gives us.

And what we find in life is that often what is is very different than what we think should be.

In other words, in the world, just in general, not even in the church, we often see that people play favorites.

And sometimes we might expect it, but what James really drives at here is he says, even in the church, this happens.

And it shouldn't be that way, even in the church.

And so he gives us this statement in verses 2 through 4, this little illustration.

He says, Suppose a man comes walking into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes comes in.

If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, Here's a good seat for you.

But you say to the poor man, You stand there, or sit on the floor by my feet.

You have not discriminated among, have you not discriminated against yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

And so he paints this little picture and he says, Here's what it's like.

He says, Somebody comes in and they're dressed well.

They're clearly rich.

And in that culture, uh people who didn't have means generally had one garment.

They had what would be like a tunic that they would wear, and they would wear it all the time, so it would often be pretty dirty because they couldn't afford a change of clothes.

And the people who had more wealth, they would usually have a tunic, and then they'd have an outer garment, and if they were really rich, they would have a second outer garment, and they would often have a change of clothes because they could afford it.

In other words, there was once a culture that was so shallow that the people would dress as if to show off their status.

Like they would, you know, wear labels and stuff as if to say, I bought this even though it costs a lot more because I can.

All right, that that those people.

And so that is what is happening.

And the person who has means comes in and they say, Here, you come up and you sit at the front in the best seats.

Now, in Wexford, here in our context, the best seats for most of you are not in the front.

I I understand that.

You think the best seats are in the back, but there was once a time where the best seats were in the front.

And then they would say uh to the poor person, you stand out here because we're not going to put you in front.

And what does James do here?

He says, This is an illustration of showing favoritism.

And what he's doing is he's saying, especially within the context of the church, this is not how it should be.

One commentator put it this way: said very simply, a Christian is or should be the last person to be impressed by the glory of somebody's social status.

And so here's the simple setup that James gives us.

He says, Here's the ideal.

There shouldn't be favoritism.

But he says, even in your churches, even in your places where you say we honor God, you show favoritism.

So what does that look like now?

Well, there are some places in our world, regardless of all the progress we've made, where race is still something that people are discriminated against because of.

And I think we could easily say it shouldn't be that way.

But beyond that, there are places where we would say that some people would prefer some people who are wealthy, much like this illustration.

Because they have a presumption that somebody who's wealthy might be able to do something for them that would benefit them, or they want to be seen as a place, or people who are associated with wealth.

But again, you don't have to necessarily have any kind of faith background to say that seems somehow to demean the value of every human being, and that isn't the way it should be.

Some people will prioritize the way that people look, their appearance.

And they'll say, I only want to be around beautiful people or people who I perceive to be as good looking, as clean, as well dressed as I am.

And if not, then I'd prefer not to associate with them.

And again, you don't have to have any kind of faith to say that seems to miss the way that we prioritize and see people.

Some people might not do it on just sheer physical attractiveness, but they might do it on their perceived coolness or hipness.

Where they say the way that you dress or the kind of micro brew that you have.

That's what tells me if you get it and get how cool people live.

But again, you don't have to have a lot of faith to say if that's really how you're deciding who you'll relate to, who you'll be kind to, is who's cool.

There's something that's a little off, or some people might do it on success.

Trying to create a club for people who are like them, who are competent.

And again, you don't have to have a lot of faith to say if you only want to treat certain people well who've had a level of success like you, then maybe, just maybe you're not seeing the value of people.

And certainly within faith context, you'll see people do it around spirituality, around morality, around doctrine and right thinking, and they'll say, if we can put together all of these things, then then these are the people I want to be like and be with, rather than people who aren't like me.

People sometimes will do it over education, they'll do it over age, they'll do it over whatever kind of thing that that you would look at and they would say, This is what I prefer.

And all of it leads to people who are in some ways impressed with people or wanting to impress others.

I mean, that's what's really at the core of this.

And what James very simply is doing here is he's saying, This is not how it should be.

Here's what Lewis Meads writes about this years ago.

He says, We put labels on people the way designers sew labels on clothes.

And we let the labels tell us what people are and what they're worth.

If we value intelligence in children, we label them as fast learners or slow learners.

And the first question we ask about a child is how well is he or she doing in school.

If we value money, we label people as well-to-do or poor.

And the first thing we wonder about people is how much money they make or how much they're worth.

If we value physical appearance, we label people as attractive or unattractive, and the first thing we ask about a person is what he or she looks like.

Here is a church group that puts a premium on stable families and lasting marriages.

And when a woman in that church gets a divorce, the church labels her as a divorced woman and binds itself to her reality and to her pains and to her gifts and to her needs.

When people come along who are physically disabled, we label them disabled, and we thereby blind ourselves to the infinite treasure that they have to offer us.

And I think Lewis Smeeds has written eloquently about what this challenge really is.

And in this text, the way that the discrimination happens is somebody's given a preferred seat.

And what's striking about that is how simple it is.

It may not even seem like that much of an affront, but what somebody did is they simply said, on the basis of your face, on what I can see, on some preconceived idea, I'm going to give you a preferred seat.

Now, you and I may not be in a lot of situations where we are given the task or have the opportunity to give people preferred seating.

But that doesn't mean that we can't still act in ways that show favoritism.

For some of us, what we'll do is we'll gossip about people.

We'll run them down behind their back because of some perceived way in which they don't measure up to some standard that we think is so significant.

For some of us, what we'll do is we'll ignore people.

We'll try to minimize any kind of contact that they make with us so that we would end up not having to deal with somebody who we don't see as being in a favored position.

Some of us will simply give a look or a roll of the eyes, or we'll give some kind of preferred treatment, if not preferred seats.

Or we'll treat somebody with scorn.

Or we'll tear somebody down.

Now notice what is said here, verse 4.

It says, Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

And so it's talking here about the idea of wicked judgments and wrong motives, how we're trying to curry favor and look for something.

And here's what we know about favoritism.

And I'm going to give you three words here that kind of give us a picture of this.

And these words are words that you can look up and mull over if you want to.

But here's really what we're talking about when we talk about favoritism.

We're talking about predilection, we're talking about prejudice, and we're talking about bias.

And a predilection is where you have a favorable, preconceived idea about how something is or what somebody's like.

So, in other words, well, let's just say this one.

You have an idea that you say, I'm from Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh's awesome, and so you're traveling somewhere and you meet somebody else from Pittsburgh and you go, because this person's from Pittsburgh, they must be awesome.

Now, obviously, you know that not everyone from Pittsburgh is awesome.

But what a predilection is, is it says, I've already decided that somebody's going to be something that I like because of some preconceived idea.

And prejudice is just the opposite.

Because what prejudice does is it takes a suspicion or an intolerance, and it says, Because I have a suspicion or an intolerance of something, then I'm going to perceive that somebody who has this as kind of their background will not be acceptable to me.

When we talked earlier this year about the issue of race, one of the analogies that I used to talk about what discrimination looks like and how it can be acceptable, is how people in Western Pennsylvania often have an acceptable kind of time saying that people from West Virginia are a certain way.

It's like an acceptable joke to be like, well, somebody from Western West Virginia, you know, ah, they're like, and and you fill in your joke.

Well, what that is, is it's a prejudice.

You're saying, because in my mind somehow, somebody from West Virginia may be, again, fill in your blank.

Therefore, I can say if somebody's from West Virginia, they must be.

Now, that may seem harmless and like poking good-natured fun at the state next to us.

I get that.

And I don't think that every time somebody makes a joke about West Virginia or somebody somewhere in Philadelphia makes a joke about somebody in Pittsburgh, that they're necessarily full of discrimination or favoritism.

But what I'm saying is this, and that is, whenever we generalize to the negative, what we're doing is we are showing some form of prejudice.

And then what a bias is, is it's basically having an idea that we refuse to evaluate or assess for correctness.

And so James here is just saying, look, we have these wrong motives and these wrong judgments that often fill us because what we do is we look at things and we we say, I want to curry favor with people who I want to be like me or to like me.

And what that does is it puts us on a path of favoritism.

Now, that church that James described in Jerusalem, we know from the text itself and from extra biblical literature that that the church in Jerusalem was made up of extremely poor people.

And so maybe it even made some sense to say, we're going to try to see this person who's wealthy as an in to the to the wealthy community here, because wouldn't that be great if we could reach the wealthy?

But James calls it out and says, you are making a fuss.

You're creating and treating this person like somehow they're a trophy because of their status.

And what favoritism is is anytime we prefer somebody because of any status that we've assigned to them in our mind.

Now, let me just push on this for a moment.

I obviously live in a world of church to a certain extent, because this is what I've done for my entire adult life.

I've worked in a church.

And so I read books about church and about how to do church and ministry and stuff like that.

And one of the books I read a little while ago was from a pastor, a pastor I know personally, who wrote a book and was talking about how to help a church attract young people.

And his overall premise was if you want to attract young people, then you need to be younger on stage.

And so they implemented in their church what they called a 75% rule, which was 75% of the people who are on stage have to be younger than age 35, because if we're going to attract people who are young, then we need young people on stage.

Now, for those of you in Wexford, um of the band tonight, if by my count, there were eight of people up here, only three of which were under age 35.

So we totally missed.

Um now, I just that that I could be wrong about people's ages, I was guessing, but but but but that in other words, we missed on that.

But according to this.

So what they would do is say, no, no, no, six of those have to be, have to be people who are under age 35.

And if you're in one of our venues in Butler in the strip district, Joel and Brady, you are timing out really quickly.

Now here's my point.

I I understand saying, look, we want to reflect who we're trying to reach, we want to reflect the community that we have, but but when you put something down and say, we'll only have this many people who are, quote unquote, young, how is that not in some ways favoritism?

Well, let me give you a more extreme example.

There's a well-known church in the United States that for years uh never wrote this because it was, uh you'll hear why they wouldn't write this.

They had a weight limit for people on stage.

Literally.

They had a height and weight restriction because they didn't want anyone on stage to reflect poorly in their minds on the kinds of people they wanted to attract.

Now, again, I'm not saying that that you want to ignore all physical appearance and somebody you put on stage, but how is that not saying, look, we'll only have the young, we'll only have certain races, we'll only have people who are thin, not somehow similar to what James is talking about.

See, here's here's the real problem.

What that does is it turns the church into a people who are trying to collect other people like them.

In other words, a collection of the cool.

When what I believe the church is actually called to be is a fellowship of the broken.

And I don't ever want to be a part of a church that says, the only people we really want, even if we don't say it, even though we say everyone's welcome, but but our actions say the people we really want are people who are cool like us.

Because what God intended the church to be was a place that reflects the kingdom value, which says there is no discrimination, there is nobody who is too something to be a part of that.

Now, I realize that you can push that to whole all kinds of extremes.

Like some people might say, Well, you only let people on stage who can sing.

My answer is yes.

Yes, that's true.

So somewhere you have to like draw some line.

I get it, but but what I'm saying is we should never miss the point.

The church should not just be about saying, I just want people who are like me, who are who are similar to me in economic status and social status and education and in coolness, hipness, age, gender, race, whatever it is, but this should be a place where people from anywhere come and reflect what it is to be a community of people where there is no favoritism.

That's what James is driving at.

So there's a book that just came out.

It's called The Opposite of Hate.

And it's written by a lady who is um publicly a lesbian.

She is uh has been a commentator on Fox News representing the left-leaning viewpoints, and now she's on uh uh uh CNN.

And the book's called The Opposite of Hate.

Somebody got it for me, so I read it, which by the way, if you ever want to send books, I will read them.

Um I appreciate that if you think something's good.

But but but I I I received this book, so I read through it.

She does a masterful job describing hate.

Chapter after chapter, why we hate, how we hate, the background of hate.

And then she comes to the end of the book, to the solution.

So, so so seven-eighths of the book has been the assessment.

Now she's in the solution portion.

And she says, in the in the solution, she says, you know, I've always appreciated Christianity because Christianity at least says we're all sinners and we're all broken, and it seems to level the playing field.

And then in the paragraphs that follow, she argues that we need to embrace all faiths and and all of this, and then she gives her real solution, and here's her solution.

Now, again, she is talking about exactly what James is talking about.

She's talking about the rancor in our world, the problems of people discriminating, showing favoritism, hate.

And here's where she comes down.

She comes down and she says, Well, here's what we need to do.

We need to connect more.

So, seven-eighths of the book, here's all the problems.

And what we need to do, I appreciate Christianity because it says people are sinful and broken.

We just need to connect more.

And her assumption is if we connect more, in other words, if if somebody who who has a prejudice or a bias or a predilection against something or for something gets together with somebody else, it will eliminate the bias, the prejudice, the predilection.

And that might be true to a point, but I believe that it comes woefully short, and this is ultimately why I believe that the church actually brings the answer to this problem in our world better than any other solution can.

See, what our world will tell us is educate, get to know each other, and when you get to know each other, you'll eliminate hate.

But haven't we had a generation of cultural sensitivity training?

And where are we?

Because it doesn't get to the heart, it doesn't change something at the fundamental base level.

And here's what James does in his solution, verses 5 through 13.

He moves from simply saying, here's a problem, to let me show you how you can live without having favoritism.

Verse 5.

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of this world to be rich in faith?

Let that sink in for a moment.

He says, hasn't God chosen the poor to be rich in faith?

He doesn't say being poor is awesome, being poor is better than being rich.

What he says is there are certain blessings that will come into your life that can only come into your life when you don't have an abundance.

That's what he's saying.

So when we favor somebody, we're maybe missing the beauty of what faith can exist when there are different challenges.

Verse 8, if you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing right.

But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convinced by the law as lawbreakers.

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is really guilty of breaking it all.

For he who said you shall not commit adultery, also said you shall not commit murder.

And if you do not commit adultery and you do commit murder, you become a lawbreaker.

Now here's the lawbreaker thing, and here's what I think he's driving at, even though he uses a different analogy.

He says, Here's the big law.

Love your neighbor as yourself, favoritism breaks it.

And then he drives and he says, and I want you to see that this is not just a small thing, that if you break the law, even in one count, that you're a lawbreaker.

Now, here's how some people hear this.

Some people hear this and they they think that what it means is that all sin is equal.

And if I do X and it's sinful, then I might as well do Y since I've already done X.

Okay?

Like this is the person who says, you know, when Jesus talks about lust and all of that being sin, well, if I fought it and it's the same as I've already done it, then I might as well go ahead and do it.

That's not what he's talking about here.

What he's saying is this, and that is that we cannot, you cannot, I cannot hide behind the rationale that says I do most things right, but so what if I have a little bit of a favoritism or a little bit of a bias somewhere?

Now here's my guess.

My guess is most people who are listening right now, any campus, you know, any of our distribution of this message later, most people will say, Oh, okay, other people have an issue with that, and I hope so-and-so really hears this.

And we don't see ourselves as being potentially the people who do favoritism.

And here's what he's he's driving at is he's saying, he's saying, There have been times that you've given preferred treatment to somebody according to their face.

And don't think of it as being so small and irrelevant.

And why is that?

Well, we could say because there will be judgment.

Verse 13.

Because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.

Mercy triumphs over judgment.

In other words, what he's talking about here is he's saying if we aren't merciful in how we approach people or gracious, then we haven't experienced grace.

But if you go back to the very beginning of this section, he says, My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, what does he do?

He says, Do you see the glory of Jesus?

Do you see it?

Then he repeats a phrase in verse 12 that we looked at last week.

He says, Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.

So what's he doing?

He's saying, Here's what I want you to understand: the law that gives freedom is Jesus ultimately, because Jesus came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.

And so when we come to a point of saying, I understand, I trust who Jesus is, that Jesus is the one who went to the cross on my behalf, that what happens then is we no longer have to live in a place where we say, I'm better than God likes me and my kind better than he likes those kind.

And that that is what gives us freedom.

But you see, we forget that.

I forget that.

I like to think that God likes Steeler fans better than Browns fans.

I mean, they have won a lot more.

And that's just a joke.

But there are parts of my soul that really do want to say, God likes me and the way that I live and the way that I think and the way that I do things better than he likes others.

And you see what the cross does is it levels it.

Here's what James says.

We looked at this several weeks ago, chapter one, verse nine.

He says, believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.

What high position?

That this life isn't everything.

And that even if you don't have a lot of status now, not just wealth, but but status, that one day you will be given status if you are a follower of Jesus Christ that is worthy of a son or daughter of the king of the universe.

That's what he's saying.

And then he says this he says, But the rich should take pride in their humiliation, since they will pass away like a wildflower.

For the sun rises with scorching heat and it withers the plant, its blossoms fall and its beauty is destroyed.

In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

Do you know what he's doing?

He's talking about the reversal that's ahead.

That the first will be last and the last will be first, that those who don't seem to have status here will one day have great status, and those who got all of their status here will one day have it taken away.

I saw a little illustration of this.

Last week I was at the Penn State football game, which was just a horrendously ugly game if you're a Pitt fan.

Congratulations, Penn State fans.

And as I was at the game at halftime, Pitt had an induction to their Hall of Fame, their athletic hall of fame, their initial induction.

So they had, I don't know, 10 or 15 athletes, former athletes on the field.

It was raining hard, so most of the people went into the back to get food or to get out of the rain.

And here's what I observed.

I observed that people who were once at the pinnacle of their sport at the University of Pittsburgh, some who've gone on to have illustrious careers in the NBA, in the NFL, in the Olympics, barely got a golf clap from the fans who were there.

Do you know what that is?

That's the reversal.

Dan Marino got a bigger clap.

Tony Dorset, not so much.

The gymnast lady, even though she did a backflip and into the splits, not so much.

And here's my point.

We live as if what we're doing here, what other people doing here, has this incredible, deep, long-lasting meaning, and it matters, but it just matters for a little while.

And 20, 30 years from now, what will happen is somebody will go, oh yeah, that was nice that you were here.

And that serves as a vivid reminder of what James is talking about in chapter one when he says, if you're in a low position, rejoice, because you will one day be exalted.

And if you're in a high position, understand that the sun will come and it will scorch it, and that high position will not last.

In other words, the the only way that we come away from favoritism is not simply to connect, although that can be helpful, but it's to understand that at the foot of the cross, the ground is level.

And that if somebody has has had a phenomenal run of success, or somebody's had no success, that God sees them as valuable members of his creation.

And my success or lack of success doesn't change that before the eyes of God, and it doesn't change it with anybody else.

Do you see how the church should be the place that leads the way and saying that there's no favoritism?

There's no preference.

And what this is pointing to is that people who have come to know who Jesus is, the glory of that truth, will be the people who really learn how to value everybody.

And here's what this means: when you go to work, and there's that annoying person that everyone wants to run down behind their back.

That you, if you're a person of faith, say, you know what?

I'm not going to join in.

Not because I am going to connect with that person, or not because I'm one of the good people, but because I see that person as an object of the love of the God of the universe is expressed in Jesus Christ.

Just as he's expressed it for me.

It means that when you find yourself in a debate with somebody who's completely on the other side of the spectrum from you, and you can't stand their views, and you can't wait to show them how wrong their views are.

Not that you never say what you think about their view, but that you say that person, who's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, is the object of the love of the God of the universe as shown in Jesus Christ.

And it's the same love that's been given to me.

I am not better because I think I'm thinking right about this issue.

Do you see how favoritism comes out of not really believing or living out the reality of what Jesus Christ has done?

But the church will be different when we become people who say, I will live in a way that reflects the reality that's true inside of me.

And when people experience a place where there's not favoritism, they'll experience the love of God in a fresh way.

And they'll say there's something that God is doing there that I want to be a part of.

Father, we thank you that you have worked in our lives in so many ways.

And Lord, I pray very simply that you would help each one of us to not just say, I don't want to be a person who shows favoritism, but to be so aware of the beauty of what you've done on our behalf that we see people differently and we see ourselves differently, and it changes the way that we live and move.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.