Religion on Trial – Sunday, September 22, 1940
We live in a day when every standard of value is being challenged, and religion has not escaped the challenge. Perhaps religion is held with disregard in some quarters because men have asked too much of religion and too little of themselves. They have supposed that a mere creed or code of belief, or ecclesiastical statute of doctrines and dogmas would take the place of self-mastery. Some have known the law but have not lived it. Some have not even bothered to know the law, but have left the knowledge of religion to a professional class, and have worshipped, once removed – if at all.
By others it has been supposed that religion was a system whereby men could have set aside the consequences of their own actions – another form of the philosophy of getting something for nothing. And so, perhaps, once and for all we should settle the question of what we may expect religion to do for us, and then judge its effectiveness or ineffectiveness by that standard. It should not be expected to give us ease without effort, or knowledge without study, or truth without search. We should not expect it to offer reward without work, forgiveness without repentance; peace without tolerance; blessings without obedience, or exaltation hereafter without justifying our existence here.
The Savior of the world gave us an indication of what we should expect of religion. In the Sermon on the Mount when He spoke of the “wise man which built his house upon a rook; And the rain descended and the floods came and the wind blew, and beat upon that house and it fell not.” But the house of the foolish man was built upon the sand, “and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27) The implication is plain, The rains and the floods and the winds came alike to the wise and the foolish. But one stood the onslaught, and the other fell before it. The man who is faithful and obedient does not escape the vicissitudes of life, but he is better prepared to meet them. And that is what we should expect of religion – not that it should spare us the varied experience of living, but that it should help us to understand difficulties and disappointments, and sorrow and hardship; to sustain us through them, and to help us to grow above and beyond them, and prepare us for a greater life to come, when we shall again enter into the presence of our Father in Heaven. The distress, the sorrow, the difficulty and the disappointments of life come to all men, but he who has his house built upon firm rook, who knows and lives and cherishes religion, pure and undefiled – is sustained through the storm. But he ‘Whose life’s structure is not builded upon such foundations – who has isolated himself from spiritual understanding – frequently breaks under the strain of life and is brought low in the anguish of his own bitterness and blindness and disappointment. It is a hard way to learn – but some men choose to learn that way.
September 22, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,579