idea of God is based largely upon what they are. They cannot understand a God who is selfless love.
That is why man created a religion of atonement, or expiation. He knew what he would wish on the part of anyone who offended him.
And in the religions of the past man has thought only of placating a God whom he feared. Religion became for him a method of propitiation. Finally theologians made the Christian religion to be an explanation of how as in a fairy story God had managed to relieve man of all obligation to consider seriously his own conduct. He was forgiven by the acceptance of a dogma and he was saved by "grace". All he had to do was to believe it. Certain systems of religion definitely stated that nothing that man could do in the way of changed conduct could possibly have anything whatever to do with his salvation.
But the true Christian religion is the changed life. The changed life means a changed attitude toward God as our Heavenly Father, and our relationship to others. Religion begins with the realization of what we are in our attitudes and conduct towards God. This results in repentance. This is carried forward into reformation. It eventually becomes entire surrender to Him. But it sometimes stops here. It becomes engrossed with man's own intimate relationship with God, and forgets the Divine objective of service to others. And in that way it has completely failed to change civilization. Man engrossed in his own happy state forgets why he was delivered from bondage,—forgets the supreme purpose of life,—the sharing with all others of the good things of life which God has bestowed on him. And without that his religion becomes self-love.
The trouble is that religion has been made to be a matter of God's forgiveness instead of the changed life whose supreme happiness should be service and sharing. It has lost the Divine spirit.
It is true that religious people strive to share with others their perverted story of God's forgiveness, based on a legalistic fiction instead of a changed life—of being saved by grace, and with nothing else to do except to smile and be happy. They speak of brotherhood, but their brotherhood is largely made up of good feeling towards others who share their religious beliefs.
