RELIGION:
IN LIFE; CHURCH: RELIGIOUS GAME

The comfortable drone of the Gloria Patri or the Lord’s Prayer repeated in unison has a marvelously tranquilizing effect upon such a man. He may sleep through the sermon, or if he remains alert enough to hear it he will never apply it to his own life in a practical way; yet the sonorous sound of the benediction followed by the sweet choral response gives him the feeling that he has profited immeasurably by his attendance at church. On the way out he will smile, shake hands, congratulate the preacher and go his way completely unchanged. Tomorrow he will drive just as hard a bargain in his business, tell the same shady stories, cheat on his income tax, shout at the driver ahead of him, bark at his wife, overeat and otherwise live like the son of this world that he in fact is.

The next Sunday he will go to church again and for a few moments experience the same radiant feeling of well-being and good will toward men that he has enjoyed once a week for years. He simply cannot relate religion to life. To him Christianity has no necessary bearing upon present conduct. It is only a pleasant thing like, say, a sunset or a Swedish massage, and it is nothing more.

1 Samuel 15:22; Psalm 51:15–17; Isaiah 1:11–20

The Warfare of the Spirit, 74.