Scriptures: James 2:1-12

Bigotry and prejudice is both an attitude and an action. You either see yourself as superior to someone else or someone else is inferior to you, and this mindset is going to lead you to treat them in a bigoted, prejudicial fashion. Everybody likes to say for the most part, “I’m not a bigot” and pretend that we are always totally objective, but the truth of the matter is we are not, even though we want to be. This is not a problem just for the modern church. The early church dealt with the problem of prejudice and the bias of bigotry a thousand years ago. James, the brother of Jesus, actually dealt with this problem in a book he wrote by his name. Today, when we think of bigotry we think primarily in terms of race, but in this particular case this was the prejudice of affluence and achievement, not of ancestry, but as you are going to see what James said to the church applies perfectly to any kind of bigotry including racial prejudice and racism. James does us a huge favor. He shares with us, not just what a bigot is, but what a bigot does and why any form of bigotry is not a misdemeanor, but it is a felony in the eyes of God.