Which Orphans and Widows?

Yesterday our church small group Bible study re-gathered for the first time this calendar year after a long hiatus over Christmas. We're studying James, and we finished off James 1 yesterday.

At the end of James 1, we get this charge: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress

Later that evening, I was talking this over with Sam, a friend of mine who's in the small group. One of my struggles with that passage is that when it was written, the orphans and widows that you knew about were in your immediate vicinity. Really, up until about 100 years ago or so, the average person was aware of the pain in his or her town or maybe region and not much beyond that.

Today, of course, we are uber-connected to all the pain in the world. If you were so inclined as to decide to refuse to be happy as long as you knew that others suffered, you would fairly easily live a monstrously joyless life.

My friend Sam pointed out that the social dynamics of the church that James is writing to are different as well. It would seem that the orphans and widows were knocking down the door of the church.

James is telling them to care for the people coming to them, to not turn those people away, as much as he is to go out and meet the needs of the neighbors. Today, at least here in the U.S, our social net is much better constructed...and our churches are fairly segregated socio-economically.

I think that all of this leads me to a couple of convictions:

1. I am charged to "not merely listen to the word and so deceive myself. Do what it says!" My temptation towards compassion fatigue is not an excuse for apathy.

2. I am charged to intentionally seek the Lord to understand which widows and orphans I'm to go and care for, and which ones I'm legitimately free to release to the hands of God and the care of others. This will always frustrate someone--most of us feel like the widows and orphans (or whatever other cause that you might feel passionate about) are the ones that matter and that everyone must get on board with.

But I think that we need to allow one another the freedom to engage and choose our particular issues (in step with the Spirit, not in step with simply our own preferences) in an issue-saturated, broken world.