The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech . . . .” In other words, there will be no state (i.e., “established”) religion in the US, while the United States will protect and guard the “free exercise of religion.” Even a cursory reading of this Amendment indicates tension and the need to balance prohibiting the Congress from establishing a specific religion with the protection of individual citizens’ free exercise of religious beliefs.

James addresses the “disease” of worldliness, offering its symptoms and its deceitfulness.

As I have summarized many times on Issues in Perspective, God has created three primary institutions—the family, the state and the church. Each has stewardship responsibilities before Him and the functioning of each according to His standards provides stability and order. To reject these standards is to foster disorder and dysfunction. American society today is experiencing growing disorder and dysfunction. It is therefore wise to investigate who controls and sets the respective agendas for these institutions.

James argues that controlling our speech is the mark of self-control and calls for wisdom and understanding in the believer’s life.

I grew up in the late 1950s and was in high school in the early 1960s. I was immersed in the culture of Protestant fundamentalism. My parents loved the Lord but were also immersed in that culture. In my family, Christianity was defined by a series of rigid rules. Behavior, dress and entertainment were all regulated by our church. I heard little about an intimate, personal walk with Jesus Christ. Instead, our youth group leader directed us to destroy any rock and roll records, burn all playing cards in the house and never go to a Hollywood movie, to a dance or to plays in a theater. We were taught not to even hold hands with members of the opposite sex. As I progressed in high school I became more and more uncomfortable with my parent’s faith. In college, I rebelled against it, rejecting their faith and their church.

Partiality is a sin before God and demonstrates a denial of the Royal Law of our King.

In 1798 a British clergyman named Thomas Malthus argued that human population growth would exceed the world’s ability to feed this growth in population. Calamity and massive suffering and starvation were inevitable. Robert McNamara in 1968, as president of the World Bank, spoke of “the mushrooming cloud of population explosion.” Paul Ehrlich, about the same time, published a book, The Population Bomb, in which he argued that we must “have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.” The Club of Rome issued its famous report in the 1970s on the “Limits of Growth.”

James details the 3 aspects of true “religion” and condemns “partiality” as an affront to God.

If anything is well established in American social science, it is that men are falling behind women in higher education, suffer disproportionately from drug overdoses and are far more likely to commit suicide. Furthermore, boys in the United States are less prepared than young girls when they begin school and less likely to graduate from high school or finish college. Young men are falling out of the labor force. So-called deaths of despair—by suicide and drug overdose—are nearly three times as common among men as women. One out of every five fathers does not live with his children. In 1990, 3 percent of men reported having no close friends; now, 15 percent do.

God is the giver of only good gifts and we should respond to HIs Word as disicplined doers, not heedless hearers.