James 1:26-27 reads,
1:26If
anyone among you thinks himself to be religious, while he doesn’t bridle his
tongue, but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is worthless. 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before our God
and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
to keep oneself unstained by the world.
The affliction that widows and the fatherless undergo stem from their lacking a husband and a father to both protect them and provide for them. They are therefore exploited by the unrighteous and suffer economic deprivation. Righteous people should see their affliction and visit them in it. This entails undertaking actions resulting in their protection and provision, including removing them from the hands of their oppressors and setting them into families. This entails a man becoming a husband to a widow and a father to the fatherless. And whereby a man capable of providing a widow with both protection and provision is already married, he should take the widow as an additional wife of his, and his existing wife should indeed warmly receive her into her husband's household. Just as whereby a man with children takes into his family a fatherless child, his existing children should indeed warmly receive the new child into their father's household.
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