JAMES DAY 13

DAY 13
DOES GOD PLAY FAVORITES?
James 2:5-7

James says, “Don’t play favorites,” but then he says God has chosen the poor, not the rich. Is God contradicting himself? Does God play favorites? Is God fair?

While we’re at it, is it really so wrong to make some judgments about people? Our brains are hardwired to fill in the gaps, to guess what we don’t know by what we do know. Looking for patterns, scanning people for threats, has been an effective survival technique for thousands of years. Don’t we guess right sometimes?

That’s all true, but it’s also true that sometimes we guess wrong. Our thinking might be infected with bad programming. Our own bias is an enemy because it can make us make bad decisions.Plus, do we really want other people judging us by their assumptions about us?

We have to be careful about judging people based on what little we can see, but what about God? Is God playing favorites by choosing the poor?

God picks and protects the powerless because nobody else does. Because God values ALL people, God values people that other people value least. James singles out “the rich” because they were apparently taking advantage of poor people in James’s churches. It’s not clear whether or not these were rich Christians or non-Christians, but the point is the same. These particular “rich people” were proving the point James made in chapter one: wealth is spiritually dangerous, just like fire is useful but dangerous.

Focusing attention on someone who everyone else ignores is not the same as playing favorites. In fact, if we’re not in the habit of seeing like God sees, we need to pay special attention to people we’ve ignored to reprogram ourselves. That’s not unfair, it’s fixing unfairness.

REFLECT
How is playing favorites different from God’s special attention on the poor?

PRAY
Lord, you love everyone, but you show special attention on people we ignore. Help me to focus attention on overlooked people. Amen.