In that role, these particular preachers have identified certain elements in society that they must oppose vigorously, if the world is to survive amid the average person's debauchery and disgusting habits.

I use the male pronoun here because memory tells me that I have never met a female preacher who is similarly driven. No, it is the male of the species who approaches the ordained job with a negative edge, an edge so sharp that it can cut through our questionable activities and draw no blood.

For instance, let's say that you are a 70-year-old couple who enjoys dancing. I'm not talking about ecstatic dancing, such as the dance King David performed in front of the altar. That kind of dancing has never been fully described or demonstrated in modern times and, therefore, in many churches, no dancing, sacred or profane, is allowed.

You must remain still in most churches today. You may stand up and you may sit down. But any other movement - swaying, jumping, twirling, or twitching - is forbidden. It's not a written law, mind you, but something we learned from our early visits to church, when we sat in the back row with Mother and watched the sea of immobile heads before us.

Suppose that you and your spouse went out for dinner Saturday evening and got so caught up in the frivolity that you stepped upon the dance floor and rambled to a romantic tune, your bodies pressed together as if the ups and downs of 40 years of marriage had not diminished your desire for each other.

Then on Sunday morning, still blushing from the previous evening, you went to church and heard a rousing sermon about demon music and the sinfulness of dancing. And the preacher so thoroughly denounced dancing that it became obvious that you must not only refrain from movement in church but in real life as well - especially if you are in the proximity of a person from the opposite gender.

Does this brow-beating affect your behavior?

Of course not. It draws no blood and causes no pain. It is a wasted admonition because it flies in the face of everything we understand about life - that sometimes it is necessary to cut loose and do something that makes you smile.

The same can be said for playing cards. There are preachers who would tell you that shuffling a deck of cards is the first step to degradation and damnation.

Yet, it is true there are good people who enjoy playing cards and never once have committed a sin while thus engaged. But the preacher will say you have sinned merely by cavorting with a pagan deck. And they will prove it by telling a story about Freddie, who moved from solitaire to canasta to poker and, finally, to obsessions beyond his control.

Every preacher should know enough to choose sins carefully. If you opt for sins such as card-playing and dancing, you will be fighting good ordinary people who just want to smile once in a while. But if you choose more powerful sins, you will be doing battle within a larger arena where the stakes are much higher.

Choose greed as a target and you will be fighting corporate money changers and driving them from their secular temples. Choose violence and you will be addressing wife beaters, child abusers, warmongers and the murderous hordes that seem to control our streets.

Choose dishonesty and those who cheat on their income tax, gossip about their neighbors and falsify expense accounts will squirm in their seats. Examine covetousness in a sermon and the preacher will be drilling holes in the dreams of many parishioners.

The truth is, clergy don't preach about those big-time sins these days. Some preach only against our recreations. Yes, there are preachers who don't want anyone to smile.

But we have our ways.

Clark D. MorphewAugust 2, 1997