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URE religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (James 1:27)
I have heard shallow Christians claim they do not have a religion, they only claim Christ as Savior – sounds commendable, but untrue. Anyone who loves and follows Christ in bearing their cross must claim Him as the Way, the Truth and the Light. Religion not only includes faith, but the soul’s response to faith in outward works of righteousness. The 1828 Webster Dictionary of Noah Webster defines religion in this way:
Religion in its most comprehensive sense, includes a belief in the being and perfections of God, in the revelation of his will to man, in man's obligation to obey his commands, in a state of reward and punishment, and in man's accountableness to God; and also true godliness or piety of life, with the practice of all moral duties. It therefore comprehends theology, as a system of doctrines or principles, as well as practical piety; for the practice of moral duties without a belief in a divine lawgiver, and without reference to his will or commands, is not religion.
It should be noted the Webster dictionary was the first to be published in America and predated the Oxford English Dictionary by more than 50 years. The verse above from the Book of James clearly defines one aspect of religion – COMPASSION! Without love, there is no Christian religion.
Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, a foreigner walking down the streets of Saigon would be confronted with a multitude of little children (many of them fathered by men of the departing American forces) begging for food or money upon which to buy a morsel. Ragged and hungry, these little innocents were abandoned by fathers who lacked the responsibility to compensate for their moments of sinful indiscretion. In many cases, the mothers were either killed, or imprisoned for the complicity in relationship with the perceived enemy. These little homeless little children were referred to by the Vietnamese people as the “Dust of the Earth” or ‘Bui Doi.’ Most of these ‘Dust of the Earth’ died of hunger or disease, unheralded and unnoticed.
Of course, true religion and undefiled would have required any Christian professor to care for the fatherless Bui Doi, but most took no notice of them. Of course, if we professed no religion at all except an amorphous faith in a Lord whose nature was not represented by our lack of love, we might simply bypass the suffering ‘child of the street’ with the same attitude and calloused consciences as the priest and Levite on the Road to Jericho.
Even those children who shared parentage between a departed American soldier and a loving, but abandoned, Vietnamese mother faced daily discrimination and harsh treatment of the Communist regime and its captive citizenry.
Perhaps the above picture makes you uncomfortable – or perhaps even angry that such abuse could occur. But a sin as great, or greater, is happening to our own children in America and most European nations today. It is not a sin of indifference, but one of intentional affliction of our children with every imaginable perversion. We even pay the offenders to ruin the morals of our little ones. Public educators, libraries, corporate Marxists, and others are deliberately destroying the character and future happiness of our children while we remain stone silent and continue to pay the oppressors to do the same.
The Lord Jesus Christ takes a very dim view not only of those who pervert the minds of our children, but also those who stand by silently. We are complicit to these grave sins by our silence and inaction.
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ERILY I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
If you would experience difficulty swimming with a 400 pound millstone around your neck, perhaps you might want to pay heed to the warning of our Lord Jesus Christ.
