He wrote, “Don’t ever attempt, my brothers, to combine snobbery with faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ! Suppose one man comes into your meeting well-dressed and with a gold ring on his finger, and another man, obviously poor, arrives in shabby clothes. If you pay special attention to the well-dressed man by saying, “Please sit here—it’s an excellent seat”, and say to the poor man, “You stand over there, please, or if you must sit, sit on the floor”, doesn’t that prove that you are making class-distinctions in your mind, and setting yourselves up to assess a man’s quality?—a very bad thing” J.B. Phillips, James 2.
I’ve done my best to put the above into practice over the years, but not always successfully. Still working at it…but have come to understand how to do it better.
It seems to me that the route to success is fully grasping James’ statement, “…faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.” That used to be so vague to me. But in understanding better that Jesus Christ came to show us our true identity in God, it makes more sense.
Christ points human thought away from physicality to spirituality. Jesus demonstrated that man’s individuality is not in matter, not in a body. Man is God’s image. And God’s image is something gloriously better than anything the mortal eye can ever behold in matter. Man is spiritual, not material.
So, to faithfully follow Jesus Christ’s way of thinking, one must cease evaluating people from a mortal point of view. Entirely! Man cannot be found in matter, in mortality.
This solves the whole class-distinction problem.
Man is not of low class or high class. Man is of God’s class.
If we evaluate our neighbor according to mortal standards, we are pretty clueless as to the true identity of man. We are not seeing man in Christ. What we see belies what we believe. And if we’re seeing a mortal with a material “rating” of our own judgment, our thinking is likely in a low place.
So, err no more! Man is not a mortal, a “good one” or a “bad one.” He is an immortal. And a beautiful sight to behold no matter what mortal mind argues to the contrary.
Great blog piece this morning and I think it extends even beyond class distinction to judging a man/woman based on their hair color, size, height, etc. when we look at people in determining whether to date them, hire them, etc. It all goes back to seeing their true spirituality as God’s child and that vision is beautiful and grand! Thanks Evan, for helping to open humans’ eyes to God’s ideas!
Your candid look at how closely you are approximating Christ in your everyday thoughts about others is an excellent indictment of all forms of tribalism. Not only classism, but racism, ageism, sexism, sizeism, nationalism, speciesism. All these isms hide the beauty of holiness that is built into God’s beloved child.
This blog has been very helpful. But what for me seems an impossible thing is to say to the Norwegian people who lost loved ones in the massacre last summer that the perpetrator is ‘ a beautiful sight to behold ‘. Some thoughts on this would be appreciated thank you.
“Man is of God’s class”—-a quote to remember.
Reply to Anonymous 3: Christian Science presents absolute truths of God and His idea, man.
This teaching is not asking us to accept the
expression of evil in humans (think Hitler, etc)
and love that person, but to rise above the lie
about God’s man, and to love that man.
This is a powerful thing to do, in human experience. It heals.
(Eventually there will be no more belief in evil persons.)
I am greatly comforted by this. I hope you are, too.
And thank you for yet another wonderful article, Evan!
Thank you Evan and Sue – that does help.
I needed to revise my comment above…left out an important word in the first sentence, the word, “not!”
To above, per Norway…
The evil that murderer manifested is not loveable and never will be. Evil is evil. But the man needs to be loved so he can be freed from the evil that mesmerized him into committing such a horrific crime. He was acting under the influence of deep evil. Love alone is going to free him of that influence and permanently save him from it, and others around him who are affected by his actions.
To love someone does not mean you agree with all their actions. And it does not support evil actions. It kills them, the actions, by destroying the evil motives that lead to evil actions
My C.S. Teacher told me once, “Our criticism of others is our public acknowledgment of our inability to see the Christ in the other man.”
So, in line with what you pointed out, we help others and ourselves by seeing the true man.
oops…I meant to say this,
“Our criticism of others is our public acknowledgment of our failure to see the Christ in the other man.”
We are able to do this, but we are failing if we don’t.