In a TV commercial by one credit card company Capital One, a couple is making a purchase in a shopping center. When the clerk tells how much it will cost, the woman says she will pay the bill with her credit card. Suddenly hordes of barbarians begin surging into the store. They run down the store aisles yelling, with weapons drawn, toward the couple making the credit card purchase. The point of the ad is that making yourself liable to the finance charges on credit cards is like bringing on the barbarians. One quick scene in the ad gives us a spiritual metaphor. As the barbarians charge past one store clerk at the perfume counter, she sprays perfume on them.

Trying to civilize a horde of bloodthirsty barbarians, to get rid of their foul aroma, with a few squirts of perfume, is what we are doing when we hope to transform sinners by squirting them with religion. Religion cannot change the barbarian at the heart of every person. Only a relationship with Christ brings the soul conversion that changes a sinner into a saint.