RELIGION:
EMPTESS OF; HYPOCRISY

I have not said that religion without power makes no changes in a man’s life, only that it makes no fundamental difference.… The changes are in form only, they are not in kind. Behind the activities of the non-religious man and the man who has received the gospel without power lie the very same motives. An unblessed ego lies at the bottom of both lives, the difference being that the religious man has learned better to disguise his vice. His sins are refined and less offensive than before he took up religion, but the man himself is not a better man in the sight of God. He may indeed be a worse one, for always God hates artificiality and pretense. Selfishness still throbs like an engine at the center of the man’s life. True he may learn to “redirect” his selfish impulses, but his woe is that self still lives unrebuked and even unsuspected within his deep heart. He is a victim of religion without power.

Ephesians 1:15–23; Hebrews 6:1; 3 John 9

The Pursuit of Man, 19–20.