order to be glorified by people. If you pray, you are not to be like the
hypocrites who love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the
street corners so people can see them. (Matthew 6 : 2 , 5 )
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you close the
kingdom of the heavens to people. For you yourselves do not go in,
and you do not let others in who are trying to enter. Woe to you hyp-
ocrites, because you travel across sea and land to make one convert, and
when you have made one, you make that convert two times more a
child of hell than you are. Woe to you hypocrites, because you clean
the outside of the cup and plate but the insides are full of plundering
and self-indulgence. (Matthew 23 : 13 , 15 , 25 )
Isaiah prophesied about you hypocrites correctly when he said, “This
people honors me with its lips, but its heart is far from me.” (Mark 7 : 6 )
Woe to you hypocrites, because you are like invisible tombs that people
do not know about as they walk over them. (Luke 11 : 44 )And other passages as well.
These people are like pieces of flesh without blood. They are like
crows or parrots that have been taught to say the words of some Psalm.
They are like birds that have been taught to sing the melody of some
sacred hymn. The sound of their talking is like a hunter’s birdcall.
Deadgoodwill is what people have when their faith is dead. The nature 453
of the faith determines the nature of the goodwill. (In the chapter on faith
I showed that the two become one [§§ 336 , 362 – 367 ].) It is clear from the
Epistle of James ( 2 : 17 , 20 ) that faith is dead in people who do no works.
Faith is also dead in people who do not believe in God but who do
believe in people who are alive or dead, or who worship idols as being
intrinsically holy, as non-Christians used to do. When people have this
kind of faith, the religious offerings they make to miraculous statues (as
they call them) for the sake of salvation, counting these donations as acts
of goodwill, are no different than pieces of gold and silver put in the urns
and coffins of the dead; in fact, these donations are like the morsels
offered to Cerberus and the coin paid to Charon for passage to the
Elysian fields.
The goodwill that people have when they believe there is no God
other than nature is not illegitimate, hypocritical, or dead. It is nonexist-
entbecause it is not attached to any faith. The term goodwilldoes not
apply, because goodwill derives its quality from faith. From heaven’s
§453 goodwill & good actions 535