What is a pure religion?

Philippines
September 22, 2010 8:54pm CST
Whenever I see discussions about spiritual things and about the Bible, I always see people associate it with religion. For me, religion has nothing to do with our personal relationship with God. I got curios so I went on to find what is pure religion in the Bible. I found in the book of James in the Bible that pure religion and undefiled is to visit the fatherless and widows during affliction. I went to my Church and look at our Preacher. He catered to the fatherless and widows by bringing the sick daughter of one of our widow. He paid also the bills. The Church paid for the funeral of one of our members and the widow is taken cared of by our Church. Is this not the pure religion that we are looking for?
3 responses
@Drumman (305)
• United States
25 Sep 10
You're definitely right that we are called to care for the fatherless and the widows. That's James 1:27. Well, that's the first half of the verse anyway. You seem to have missed the rest of it that says we are to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world. The real question is how do we know what parts of this world are polluted and what parts are part of the pure religion mentioned in James? That's what the rest of the bible is about. You can't just live by one verse and disregard the rest. It's an awful big Bible to be doing that. You looked through the Bible to read about pure religion, so how did you miss the parts about having a relationship with God?
1 person likes this
• Philippines
4 Oct 10
The continuation of James 1:27 says about being unspotted from the world in my King James Bible. Unspotted means that we need to live a clean life pleasing to God. Our foundation is our relationship to God through Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ can save and nothing more.
@peavey (16936)
• United States
23 Sep 10
It sounds like your church is doing the right thing, but many do not. I think the "pure religion" phrase has a different meaning now than it did when the book of James was translated. Caring for others, especially widows and orphans is definitely connected to our personal relationship with God because we are living out the rules that He gave us when we do that, and because He has put the ability to do it in our hearts. God loves a cheerful giver!
1 person likes this
• United States
23 Sep 10
I gotta go with Brother James on this one! It's pretty simple what pure religion is.. but the church is too busy doing church and being religious to find out anything about pure religion!