A couple of weeks ago, my friend Ashley and I were discussing one of her upcoming sermons, and we got into a discussion of what God wants from us. She quickly quoted Isaiah – defend the orphan! Fight for widows! We got off on a bit of a rabbit trail that led us to James 1, where he says that caring for orphans and widows is “pure and genuine religion.”
Which begs the question: Why?
Remember when Jesus identifies the “greatest commandment,” by which he meant the norming commandment in the Torah, the one that instructs us in how we should interpret all the others. He said, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” James mirrors this command by saying true religion is “refusing to let the world corrupt you” and “caring for orphans and widows.” So, for James (and the Hebrew prophets), care for orphans and widows is how God measures whether we’re truly loving our neighbors as ourselves.
The Canary in the Coal Mine
Why does the Bible use ‘widows and orphans’ as the metric for faithfulness to God?
New Testament scholar Rodney Reeves (who was my NT prof in undergrad!) called widows and orphans the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for God’s people. In the early days of mining, miners took a caged canary down into the mines with them. Because canaries are smaller than humans, they show signs of oxygen deprivation sooner. If the canary passed out, the miners knew they were all in trouble.
Canaries are more vulnerable to carbon monoxide than miners.
Orphans and widows were, in the ancient world, more vulnerable to injustice than everyone else. Why? Because the governing systems of the ancient world were explicitly patriarchal. Societies were organized around a patriarch – the eldest living male, and patriarchs were the judges in both formal and informal legal systems.
Orphans and widows by definition have no ‘eldest male’ to be attached to. That meant that they were, by definition, excluded from a patriarchal culture. They had no channels through which to appeal when they were wronged.
Injustice isn’t a tangible thing; it’s an idea. Injustice has tangible effects, but they’re not always obvious. Not unlike carbon monoxide.
I’m a big guy. I’m one of the biggest persons in my house. If we have a carbon monoxide leak, I’ll be among the last to feel the effects because of my size.
Similarly, I’m a straight, cis-gendered white guy. If I lived in the Biblical world, I would be similarly among the least-vulnerable to injustice. Which is why I would need to attend closely to the widows and orphans. Because they’re definitionally excluded from the system, they are more vulnerable to injustice.
In other words, if there is injustice, it will be most visible first among widows and orphans. So, when God wanted to look for injustice among God’s people, he first looked at the widows and orphans.
Systems of Exclusion
But what about today? Though there’re still vestiges of patriarchy hanging around, our system provides rights for widows and orphans.
Is there anyone who is definitionally excluded from our system?
The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, the foundations of our legal system, exclude both Native Americans and Black persons by definition. Native Americans were not granted US citizenship until 1924, and the federal government is still refusing to honor treaties signed between the government and native nations.
The Constitution explicitly counts Black persons as 60% (3/5) of a white man. And there’s not a single female pronoun in either document. (Yes ‘man’ is an archaic way to refer to all humans, but it’s still worth noting that women weren’t considered fully-empowered citizens in our founding document. For a more thorough examination of these policies, check out Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah’s new book, Unsettling Truths.)
It’s also worth noting that neither Latin or Asian Americans are considered in our founding documents either. This translated into direct policy discrimination as larger numbers of both groups entered the US (or as the US entered their spaces). For example, when the US took what is now Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and more from Mexico, the former Mexican citizens were told they would receive the full rights of US citizens. Many, however, lost their lands in state and federal courts. Hundreds of others lost land in federal decisions like the California Land Act of 1851, which served to deliver land to White settlers from the Hispanic and Native landholders. The federal government also passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first law banning numerous people groups now under the banner of “Asian” from immigrating to the U.S. The Act remained in place until 1943, a year after President Roosevelt forced over 110,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps.
We’ve passed some amendments to work to remedy some of this – African Americans were granted the right to vote, as were women, and most Native Americans are now citizens. But the fact remains that persons of color have long been excluded definitionally from full citizenship. Our founding documents were designed to privilege persons like me.
So, asking whether or not I see injustice isn’t very helpful. My definitional privilege means I won’t spot justice problems. If I’m serious about spotting injustice, I need to look at the folks who are excluded by definition from full participation in our society. This includes persons of color, especially women.
That bears out: we face an epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women (earlier this week, the President appointed a task force to address this issue). And Black women’s lower life-expectancy compared to white women is well-documented.
These are two clear warning signs that we have a justice problem. The most vulnerable among us are not okay. And God’s call on us is to “defend” and “fight for” those who are most vulnerable. We have work to do before we can say we’re obeying Jesus in loving our neighbors as ourselves.
