Editorial May 13, 1922 Issue

Responsibility

Ella W. Hoag

The thought of responsibility presents to the Christian Scientist two distinct and opposite phases, one true and the other false; one based on divine Principle, fixed and reliable, the other with its foundation on the sands of human opinion, shifting and unstable; one bringing in its train only good and its blessing, the other attended with disappointment and unhappiness. Right responsibility turns one's thought to divine Principle, while a false sense of it plunges one ever deeper into the morass of personal sense.

There is no question but that every individual is responsible for his own thinking and acting. We are free always to accept or reject the thought that knocks at our own mental door. Each one is at liberty to choose between right and wrong; and the responsibility rests upon the individual as to where the choice shall lie. Even Moses presented this right idea to the people, calling upon them to choose between the true and the false; while many prophets emphasized the fact that all must decide for themselves whether they would serve the one, only God, or their own false belief in gods many. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve," had often to be reiterated.

From the standpoint of scholastic theology, the recognition of individual responsibility has been attended with a great sense of fear, and the more conscientious the individual the greater, often, seemed the fear. Granted, that the individual desired to choose only good,—there was still the fear lest a mistake be made; and then all the baneful effects of such mistaken choice would be expected to appear in full force. This fear of making mistakes immediately produced in the fearful one a sense of false responsibility; for it not only presented the possibility of its own wrong decision, but invariably feared for every one else. Consequently, the one tormented thus would be betrayed into undertaking to help every one else to avoid mistakes, until a large part of the world through a false sense of responsibility had come to believe it not only helpful, but quite necessary, for every one to mind every one else's business.

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