Religion Must Become More Religious
Story★★★★If religion is to survive, it seems to me that it can only survive by becoming more religious, not less; by having more of God in it, not less. It can only survive as it proves itself necessary to the individual man or woman who is not satisfied to think that life has no meaning at all except that one eats and drinks for seventy or eighty years and then makes way at the table for somebody else.
Religion says: “For God’s sake make a better world in all material matters. Be ready to toil and fight, and even to die, rather than let one little child grow up to be bitterly disappointed in this world which it believes to be so lovely and wonderful. But for God’s sake, too, don’t let that same child grow up to believe that it is just an animal, without a soul to cherish and a God to pray to, to give the people life — life to the full, enriched by all that good government and sound culture can provide — but give them something greater than life as well: give them a vision of the end and purpose of their life as children of a God who is their Father, and who must therefore need their lives for all eternity.”
If religion does not say that, what has it to say that any high-minded politician cannot say ?
The point
Religion survives by becoming more, not less, spiritual—giving people not just material progress but eternal meaning and purpose as God's children.