Faith and Action

As we study James it starts to become clear that the question is not, “Does a person need to do good deeds once they have faith?” but rather is, “Is faith without action even faith at all?”

To dive into this further I want to use the classic children’s Sunday School example to describe faith: a chair. The analogy is that you will sit in a chair without thinking about it because you have faith that it will not collapse or that it will provide comfort to your tired body. Typically this example is used to prove that everyone has to have faith in something.

I want to take this analogy in a different direction. Try to imagine a person who walks around making loud, bold claims about his faith in chairs. He has a bumper sticker on his car that says, “Chairs are the answer.” He wears a t-shirt that says, “Yes I believe in the comforting power of chairs.” And he stands on street corners shouting things like, “Be delivered from the sore, achy feet, legs and back your life is spiraling towards! Sit in a chair! I’m here today to tell you that it is possible to sit in a chair! Come talk to me if you’d like to find out how!”

Again, pretending that this person actually exists, let’s say that you follow him around for a couple of days. As you trail him from place to place you start to notice that he never sits in a chair himself, even though he claims he has this incredible faith in them. He’ll stand for hours on end, maybe lie down on a bed or lean against a wall, but you never see him sit in a chair. One night he even goes to a friend’s house for dinner and declines when offered to take a seat. Instead he stands up through the meal and later sits on the floor while everyone else sits in chairs to watch a movie.

At first you might be thinking, “Well, maybe he’s sat in so many chairs that he’s deciding to take a break,” or perhaps you’d think, “He’s such a selfless person! He’s willing to sacrifice his own comfort so other people can sit in chairs.” After a few days or weeks, however, of following him around and seeing him sit on everything from the floor, to boxes, to the hood of a car, anything but a chair, then you’d start to doubt his claims. You wouldn’t say, “He has faith in chairs… he’s just not practicing right now,” or, “He just needs to grow in his faith in chairs.” In fact, it wouldn’t be long before you’d be saying, “This man has no faith in chairs at all!” You wouldn’t believe his claim of faith in chairs because his actions would point out that he’s a fraud!

So why would we believe someone has faith in God just because they claim to?