High Religion and Human Nature
Story★★★★“The practice of high religion,” as Walter Lippmann points out, “had to mean separation from human society and violence to human nature.” Men expected, if they lived the lives of monks or hermits, to overcome all the fever of human passions — greed, love of money, love of power and every evil desire. Their expectation failed. High religion did not come that way.
Their separated lives did not assure them self-control; their isolation did not serve, in any useful way, the needy world; their withdrawal did not procure them the mind of Christ. For He did not live the hermit’s life. He was a social being, mixing, eating and drinking with men, fraternizing with publicans and sinners and children and women. He suffered and defied all our temptations in open, daily contact with men.
“High” religion there is, without doubt; and there is a religion of a lower or popular type. It partakes very largely of the spirit of the age; it condescends to the average man.
The point
Walter Lippmann explains that monastic/hermit life sought to overcome passions but failed—true high religion means living Christlike in society, not withdrawn.