Nipate
Forum => Controversial => Topic started by: GeeMail on October 27, 2014, 02:42:17 PM
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http://www.absg.adventist.org/2014/4Q/TE/PDFs/ETQ414_05.pdf
Class Struggle
As every literature evangelist knows, very often those who have the
least are willing to sacrifice the most to buy Christian books. Well-to-do
neighborhoods tend to be tough territory to sell books in, because the
people who live there may be content with what they have and so very
often do not feel their need of God as much as those who have less. The
same phenomenon is also detectable on a much larger scale: the church
often has grown the fastest in places and periods of economic and social
stress. After all, aren’t even those individuals who are struggling with big
issues often more open to the hope presented in the story of Jesus than
are those who think that things are going great for them?
Read
James 2:5, 6. How does James expand here on what he wrote in
the four previous verses?
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Judging from this passage, it would seem that there were major issues
in the church among the rich and the poor. God chose the poor who,
though rejected by the world, were “rich in faith,” while the rich used
their wealth to “oppress” the poor. This problem, that of the rich exploiting the poor, was an ever-present reality at that time. Even worse, Roman
law codified discrimination against the poor and in favor of the rich.
“Persons of lower class, who were thought to act from economic self-
interest, could not bring accusations against persons of higher class, and
the laws prescribed harsher penalties for lower-class persons convicted
of offenses than for offenders from the higher class.”—Craig S. Keener,
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 694.
Read James 2:7. What important point does James make here about
the impact of this bad behavior?
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Their bad behavior is really blasphemy against “the good name” of
Jesus. Bad actions are bad enough in and of themselves; what makes
them worse is when those who profess the name of Jesus do them. And
even worse would be those who, in the name of Jesus, use their wealth or
power to gain advantage over others in the churches, which often leads to
divisions and quarrels. Hence, how careful we should be that our words
and actions match the “good name” we associate ourselves with.