It is not a game, and I feel that anyone that who takes the belief of people, the only thing that shouldn't be tampered with, and defiles them in such a way as in the name of God deserves any evils that happen to them in this life or another. People, not just white, have always tried to manipulate things to their advantage, especially religion. That, aside from all the other moral wrongs that are committed against the innocent, should be what it is called, sacred. People should be allowed to have their relationship with God not to be tainted by any one of the seven deadly sins.
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Baldwin saw deceit not only behind the pulpit but in front of it as well. He was not the only person to seek safety in the house of God. Many people were there for many different reasons. Some were there to save their souls from perishing in hell, some were there to stay off the streets, some were there because it was the "right" thing to do, and many other reasons. "People, I felt, ought to love the lord because they loved him, and not because they were afraid of going to hell" (Baldwin 35). Baldwin himself went through an experience where he was saved. Where his soul was purged of the sins he had committed, he had given his life to God, out of what he though was love. "One moment I was on my feet singing and clapping and, at the same time, working out in my head the plot of a play I was working on then; the next moment, with no transition, no sensation of falling, I was on my back, with the lights beating down onto my face and all the vertical saints above me . All I really !.
remember is the pain, the unspeakable pain; it was as though I were yelling up to heaven and heaven would not hear me And in the morning when they raised me, they told me that I was "saved"" (Baldwin 29). This was before he became a preacher. A teenage boy would become a preacher in this church. Yet the reason that he devoted himself to the church in that manner was not just to spread the word of God, but also "I realized immediately that I could not remain in the church merely as another worshiper.
