This passage exhorts us not just to be “hearers” of the word - and not just “doers,” either; but hearers and doers. It does not call us to shun religion in favor of activism. It defines true religion and demands that we practice a religion that is genuine.
These well-known, often cited passages from James lay down a bracing call to what would appear to be a rigorous, down-to-earth Christian activism. These verses are often waved in our faces by activists, in church and out, as a challenge — perhaps even a taunt — to set aside our Bibles and our proof texts, our doctrines and our angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin dogmas and get out there and start doing — for the oppressed, for the poor and needy.
They have a point. The injustices and outright horrors of war, poverty and racism persist among us still. Certainly, the church could be doing more to confront these evils that fly directly in the face of Christian truth. We could perhaps spend less on brick-and-mortar extravagances and traditional versus contemporary controversies and instead devote more energy to concrete outreach to the desperate and the destitute.
But when we look past the taunts and the challenges and see James’ point for what it truly is, we find that this is not so much a call to action as a call to true piety, true devotion — yes, true religion; a call to be, not hearers only, not doers only, but hearers-and-doers. For, as our tradition has always insisted, salvation does not come as a reward for doing good works. A right relationship with God is not a reward for doing good out of a sense of guilt. To use James’ very own words, salvation comes as a word from above, from God “the Father of lights,” a word that truly re-defines us as people who genuinely love, as opposed to people who put on a show of love for God, or love for neighbor, in hopes of eternal or temporal reward.
God-in-Christ “gave birth to us by the word of truth,” our passage says, so let us “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save [our] souls.” It is that religious devotion, that attention to a word “from above, coming down from [God]” that initiates the practice of true religion — hence it is to true religion, based on such straightforward theological understandings, that we are here called.
And what is this “true religion”? Yes, James belabors the point that true religion is being a “doer of the word,” and not merely a “hearer of the word.” And, God bless him, he is even more specific than that! True religion comes down and grounds itself firmly on earth in “car[ing] for widows and orphans in their distress” and “keep[ing] oneself unstained by the world.”
Hearers kidding themselves
Properly understood, therefore, this is not, as it is so often portrayed as being, an exhortation to get out there and start doing good works. More accurately, it is an exhortation to stop deceiving ourselves and to start practicing true religion. Draw near to God, and “doing the word” will inevitably happen.
What does that mean?
An admittedly outrageous paraphrase of Jesus’ parable of the pharisee and the tax collector1 may be helpful for elucidation:
A social justice warrior and a white supremacist went into a church to pray. The social justice warrior’s prayer went something like this: “I thank you, non-binary Spirit, that I am not like those people — or even like this embarrassing redneck over here. I have little time or patience for mere dogma or doctrine or organized religion. I take action! I march! I protest!”
But the white supremacist, struck to the heart by something, something he could not even put into words, was not able even to lift up his eyes to the altar. He just kept pounding himself on the chest, saying “Lord! Have mercy! I’m nothing but a sinner!”
It was the white supremacist who went home justified. For though, over the course of a rough life, he had come to be severely deluded about some things, he was also severely broken, and, by the grace of God, had drawn closer to the kingdom of God than did the social justice warrior.
Some clarifications
The polar opposites here could just as easily be flipped, portraying a smug white supremacist and a repentant, agonizing social activist.
It can be argued that white supremacists don’t see themselves as “white supremacists” — at least not as we define the term. They see themselves simply as standing up for themselves and their “rights,” as the world so vociferously defines “rights.”
We are not going to heal white supremacists — or any who are hard of heart toward injustice or relievable human suffering — by taunting them or making fun of them or belittling them for their supposed lack of awareness, intelligence or sophistication. That is the world’s way of treating enemies, and we are called, in these passages from James, and others, to — among other things — keep ourselves “unstained by the world.”
What will heal the hard of heart is a broken heart, dragged into the presence of God by the very Spirit of God; the recognition that one is a sinner in every sense of the word, whom only God can cure. Leaving aside for a moment the suggestion that we could use a little more of that ourselves, what can we do to initiate that kind of repentance?
Just ... do.
Do good works, without any hope of reward, result or recognition. Not necessarily spectacular works that call attention to themselves for their brightly lit “goodness;” but small stuff like “caring for orphans and widows.” The doing must start, not necessarily with the globally significant works of large nonprofit corporations, but with commitment to everyday loving-kindness toward people who are invisible, people whom the world doesn’t even notice. Not loud, fashionable, fist-pumping, slogan-chanting protest demonstrations in which we jostle one another to make sure the TV cameras notice us, but quiet and barely visible work among those whom all persuasions ignore.
Truly good works do not proceed from us, or our commitments. They are divinely inspired by new birth, a “birth by [God’s] true word,” says James. The Creator has given us, by the Creator’s word, a ‘birth’ that is greater than the fact of physical birth. It is as much a fact as physical birth. We start on the path to good when we welcome that “word planted deep inside [us] — the very word that is able to save [us].” Yes, when that re-birth, that re-definition has happened, then WE will become “...doers of the word and not only hearers,”as James says — you won’t be able to help yourself!
Self-deception or true religion?
So what does this mean? The New Interpreters’ Study Bible remarks on these passages note that the point of this passage, indeed, the point of the entire epistle, is calling attention to “the contrast between self-deception and pure piety”; we are exhorted to “avoid self-deception and practice genuine piety.”2
True devotion is “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” This is a call, above all, to have faith, for if we truly approach God in faith, “works” will take care of themselves — or, rather, we will know what works we will have to do, and we will not be able to not do them. After all, what kind of faith is it that doesn’t result in works of some sort?
Hearers and doers
True religion is not a matter of simply doing good works, any more than it is a matter of simply hearing the gospel. Yes, we all know about, and, in our culture, anyway, love to criticize those who “hear only,” who have entire scripture passages memorized, who are versed in all the correct theology, doctrine and dogma, but who live mean and self-centered lives. These are the Christians that people inside and outside the church smugly criticize as hypocrites.
But one can in the same spirit do good works for completely egotistical, self-serving reasons. There are “doers only,” just as there are “hearers only.” Both mislead themselves. What does hearing and doing look like?
In the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector paraphrased earlier, the tax collector does not do anything — he doesn’t even promise to quit tax collecting, or otherwise amend his ways. In several places, Jesus alludes to the sufficiency of not doing anything, but simply having faith.3 Doers-only see doing as just one more thing to be pleased with ourselves about, one more accomplishment, one more line item on the resumé. That is how the world trains us to do life — not to do good, but to do just enough good to make ourselves look good.
James calls us to keep ourselves unstained by that world as clearly as he calls us to be doers. And even in our devotion to doing good, we can prove more committed to looking good than to actually doing good.
May we not be hearers only, or doers only. May we above all open ourselves to receive that healing, transforming, re-defining word from above, from the true God of Light, and then follow fearlessly where that light leads us.
1 Luke 18:9-14.
2 The New Interpreters Study Bible New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Abingdon Press, 2003), 2174.
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