A Bible Verse About Religion (James 1:26)

A Bible verse about religion:

“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.” James 1:26

Spoiler alert: 3 movie references.

The verse summarizes a previous post that I wrote about hypocrisy. It is my belief that hypocritical Christians are the greatest detriment to the whole Christian philosophy.

There’s a joke somewhere that Republican Christians will picket and protest abortion clinics because abortion is murder and God despises it.

Those same Republican Christians will picket and protest the government giving aid to those children after they’re born. That is ironic, no?

Before anyone gets bent out of shape, Democrats are no better. And really, it doesn’t matter what your political identity is, because being a Christian should supersede any political allegiance.

Doing the right thing crosses all party lines.

I’ll take a step off my soapbox now, but the point that I’m trying to make is that most Christians are hypocrites. 

They praise God on Sundays and then go back to gossiping about their boss on Monday. They bemoan the neighbor down the street, or look down upon someone less fortunate.

The world is in shambles, and it needs a lot of help.

A few years back I stopped reading the news because I realized that there’s nothing in there that I NEED to know. I came to the conclusion that the news media is simply a business. They realize that scare tactics get more views, so that’s what they do.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a left wing or right wing media outlet; they’re all the same. They tease you with a story and then scare you into staying. It’s clickbait at it’s finest.

Along with not watching the news, I stopped paying attention to social media. Obviously, there are still people that I follow (mostly on YouTube) because I enjoy their content and I learn from it.

But the average social media post is simply a waste of time.

However, the other day I read a post on Next Door. It’s probably been around for awhile, but I recently downloaded it to see if it would be a good alternative to Facebook Marketplace.

This is getting really off topic, but I use Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell things. I buy things to sell on eBay, or equipment to repair and flip.

But I can’t stand Facebook Marketplace because the searches are so irrelevant and it’s inundated with ads.

So I tried Next Door.

On it, I happened to see a post by someone in our area that explained that they owned a building downtown that they rent out to a small business.

Unfortunately, the building has become a loitering place for the homeless. Because of the frequent police calls, the city has informed the building owners that they need to install some measures to discourage the homeless from congregating – at the owner’s cost.

Naturally, this post was met with mixed results. Some people said we need to be more compassionate to the homeless but offered no results. Some sided with the owners and said it was ridiculous that the city would require the owners into such action.

Especially when city policy has directly led us into the situation. The point of me telling you all this is that it’s clear that no one really knows the answer.

And I see it every day in my job.

16 years ago when I started my career, we hardly ever encountered a homeless person. Now, it’s dozens of times a day.

I doubt there are any accurate statistics on this, but I can imagine that the homeless population in our city has grown into the thousands.

The Christian in me says that we need to love them and be compassionate. The human in me is tired of dealing with it. It’s not like your neighbors are all losing their jobs and becoming homeless.

Nope, people are coming from all over the country to our city because they know they can get free medical care, free food, and for a lot of them – free housing.

People even tell us that their city bought them a bus ticket to come to our city.

Thanks, Portland.

So our city continues to invest more and more money into shelters and housing for the homeless. On the surface, that’s great. It’s loving and compassionate, and it’s great for politics. In reality though, the more we build, the more people come.

Just like the Field of Dreams, “if you build it, THEY will come.”

I truly believe that the best way to help these people is to help them in a lifelong sense. The whole “give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish” parable.

Or, as Jerry Maguire said, “Help me help you.”

That, is the cold hard truth about true love. It doesn’t enable. Instead, it teaches and shows the way to God and a better life. That’s the only way to find real change.

Recap

I’m sorry; we got way off topic in this one. But in a weird way, I think it’s still relevant. Long story short, don’t be a hypocrite. And remember,

“ELE man. Everybody love everybody.”

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