Not exact matches
The frequent reception
of Our Lord in the Eucharist is a
pious practice which should be widely recommended.
The religious leaders (the Pharisees) have largely ceased to give an effective lead, and have become more and more absorbed in
pious practices at the cost
of the «weightier matters
of the Law.»
Pious practice should therefore be done in such a way that this relationship is expressed adequately, reflecting both the compassionate loving character
of God on the one hand, and the transformative effect
of knowing such a God on the other.
Their
pious acts are
of no avail, for God's pleasure is in justice that must «roll down like waters» and in righteousness that must be «like an ever - flowing stream» (Amos 5:24) The people have not
practiced justice or righteousness.
Schools belonging to conservative churches, on the other hand, are often very conscious
of their Christian grounds, but they typically express this in terms
of conservative mores, an emphasis on
pious practices, and the teaching
of Christian doctrine in the curriculum.
There will come a time where these
pious believers will do nothing else than go to church and pray to their god for new product developments to magically appear on trees, instead
of going to college and
practice science and engineering so that they can develop those new products themselves.
Do the sacraments
of the church stand for something ultimately real, or are they merely
pious exercises, valuable only because
of the psychological effect they have on those who
practice them?
But let us take for example the
practice of human sacrifice which has been long regarded with horror in the West, yet was seen as a noble and
pious act in certain cultures (e.g. the Aztecs
of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica).