Don Wildmon
AFA/AFR founder
Editor’s note: This column first appeared in the March 1992 AFA Journal.
October 2009 – From Tim Wildmon: My dad, Don, was hospitalized August 14 and diagnosed with St. Louis encephalitis. At press time, he remains in the hospital and is making gradual progress. Our family and the staff here at AFA would like to thank everyone who has let us know they are praying for his speedy recovery. Until he returns, the vital mission of AFA will go on.
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The New Testament book of James is an excellent book. Individual Christians would do well to read the book occasionally. It can be read in only a few minutes.
The book is one of practical applied Christianity. For instance, James reminds his readers, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.”
One of the things which distresses me greatly is the fact that in many churches, and individual lives, Christianity is not an applied faith. It often is mostly a mental attitude.
I have always felt, and still feel, that Christianity which is not applied is not Christianity at all.
James says: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
“But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”
Faith without works is, indeed, dead.
Many in our churches have reached the conclusion that if we attend worship occasionally, give a little of our money, and do a little work around the church building we have done our Christian duty, fulfilled our Christian commitment.
The Christian life is not a right mental attitude. The Christian life, as James stated so well, is one which is lived. 
