Make Religion Concrete by Arthur W. Spaulding

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 21, 1912

Make Religion Concrete

By Arthur W. Spaulding

Come, Let Us Live With Our Children—No. 8

Make Religion Concrete

ARTHUR W. SPAULDING

Every Christian parent wants his child to be a Christian, and essays to make some contribution toward his conversion. But what it is to be a Christian and what constitutes conversion are matters variously understood. To most persons religion in another is a perfume,—something gratefully recognized by the senses, but hard to define, harder still to compound. And so most parents, instead of seeking laboratory methods to make it, seek magic methods to conjure it. You and I many times have seen parents in tears upon witnessing the open profession of Christ on the part of their child. The tears are not to be condemned, for they are here the symbol of joy; but they are also the symbol of that helplessness, that unscientific appeal to fortune, to chance, to emotion instead of to reason, which characterizes altogether too many of our conversions.

Lacrimose conversions are all too liable to be, like Reuben’s character, “unstable as water.” So long as we believe, so long as our youth are taught, that the most pronounced evidences of religion are speaking in meeting and eschewing novels, we shall find our young people at once babes and hopeless prigs.

Far be it from me to leave an impression of condemning the one or approving the other. I believe in open testimony for Christ, and I hate and fear the effect of fiction upon the minds and souls of our children. But I maintain that these (chance examples among the other evidences of religion) must not be sought as ends in themselves; they should come, if they come at all, from convictions and experiences of a deeper life. Testimonies for Christ should be, not a mere profession of loyalty, but a report, or at least an echo, of service rendered.

All this points to the great need of a clearer conception of what constitutes religion and of what operates to secure conversion. Sentimentalism in religion is a rotten stick, yet it is what many, if not most, Christian workers lean upon. And I charge that its opposite extreme, materialism, is induced chiefly by the revulsion of sensible but ill-informed natures against sentimentalism.

Fathers and mothers, if you would have your children steadfast Christians, acting upon principle, not upon emotion, you must live with them a life wholly permeated with the everlasting gospel. The transient evangelist can do nothing for your child without you; with you, there is little for him to do. Let us learn day by day what it is to make religion concrete. God waits to teach all of us, each in his own peculiar circumstances. In that learning there are certain points to be observed.

Be natural, not sanctimonious. A boy or a girl hates sanctimony. To their clear eyes it is hypocrisy. To “talk the truth” is often disastrous business for our neighbors and our children alike. It is things, not words, that attract the youth. Some fathers, some Sabbath-school superintendents, some preachers, have a special religious voice to use on occasion. The sermon, the Scripture reading, the “good talk,” suffer from its intrusion. Some whine in a thin, high key; some roll forth their words in a sepulchral, orotund form; some chop their vowels into fine “ah’s.” Many indulge so much in the use of this special voice that it becomes habitual with them; so that one man unconsciously orders a grocery list in a pulpit voice, and another converses about the flowers of the field as if he had just come from witnessing the deluge. A person so afflicted is greatly hampered in getting close to a fifteen-year-old boy or girl.

Do not talk about the truth as if it were resting on Sinai’s top. “The word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and

in thy heart.” The fact is, if we ourselves are thinking about the gospel, are planning for it in every act of ours, are applying its principles in our every thought about others, it will shine out in our faces, and our words will reveal it. But if our thoughts are habitually low or frivolous or selfish, and we think of the truth only when it appears necessary or proper to do so, every effort we make to impress the truth upon our children will bear the marks of an artificial effort, and we shall be sure to be sanctimonious. For the sanctimonious voice and mien come from an effort to impress others with our unreal piety.

The man with concrete Christianity does not fill his speech with talk of money-getting. He is industrious and frugal, but his thought and his effort are given to the forwarding of the message. It is sham Christianity that excuses a love of money-getting by saying one can thus put more money into the cause. A great obstacle to the consecration of many young people is their desire, gained in the atmosphere of the home, “to get on in the world.” The parents who with cheerful hearts are strict in the paying of tithe and all other obligations, and who are liberal toward their fellow men here and in foreign lands, but who restrict their own personal expenditures, are doing much to put practical Christianity into their children.

The absence of faultfinding and criticism, of either your own family or your neighbors, is a phase of Christianity that will do more to convert your boy and your girl than all the tears and prayers ever offered. Instead of holding up the town drunkard as an awful example to your son, enlist him in helping that drunkard’s family. Instead of criticizing Mrs. Blank’s feathers and furs (which your daughter may secretly admire, and may vary only in imitation), get Mrs. Blank interested in visiting and helping clothe some destitute children in your neighborhood. And take your own children out with you in Christian Help work.

Live a Christian life, and study daily how better to live it. Then talk with your children naturally, easily, and in a Christian way about whatever comes up. But do not act pious, nor talk in a sanctimonious voice. If, like a Christian, you grant to your children a much-desired holiday and participate with them in it, you will find much less trouble about requiring attendance at church. Only the one who habitually lives both with his children and with Christ knows what splendid, perfectly natural opportunities are all the while presenting themselves to inculcate the truth. Stand close to your boy in the work and sports of his life, and you will find it easy to lead him to be a Christian.

All that a Christian sees has some relation to his Saviour and his kingdom. The fair green earth in the spring-time is an earnest of the resurrection, the harvest is the glad day of the Lord’s coming, the singing birds are an example of cheerfulness in the midst of danger and persecution, the flowers in their simple beauty are the promise of God’s care, the sunset splendors make the opening portals of the New Jerusalem. Keep seeing and sensing these things; and though you may not always be saying them, you can not avoid always in some way conveying their impressions. The boy and the girl brought up in such an atmosphere know religion, not as an exotic, easily blasted by winds of criticism and failure, but as a vigorous, practical plant, adapted to all the conditions it finds. That is robust Christianity.