Editorial August 16, 1930 Issue

Relationships

Clifford P. Smith

CLEAR thinking calls for clear distinctions between different concepts and different qualities. This statement applies to human and divine relationships. To clearly apprehend human relations will help any person to fulfill their obligations and get their benefits. Comprehension will also help to choose the voluntary relations which are desirable, and help to avoid those which are not beneficial or worthy. As regards divine relations, apprehension of them is the basis of human achievement and welfare.

One of the absolute truths which are available for continual use is that no error or evil has any relation to God. It has no relation to the only Principle of existence, the only Giver of power. Consequently, no error or evil has either existence or power; it has no ability to even appear or seem, and no ability to produce a result. Another absolute and useful truth is that no error or evil has any relation to man. It is as foreign to man and as remote from you or me as it is from God. Man lives in the infinite Life, where there is no error or evil, and this is where you and I live.

Of human relationships, the more important are connected with family, education, citizenship, friendship, neighborliness, religion, and business or vocation. Some of these relations are involuntary or partly so, because they are fixed by birth or are determined by parents for children. Every person is born into a family and into a citizenship. Not many children can choose their teachers for either every day or Sunday. Most of the human relations, however, are voluntary: they result from choice, either at their inception or in their continuance. This fact deserves to be emphasized; it is exceedingly important. An adult can choose whether he will marry, what different or further education he will get, what citizenship local or national he will continue or obtain, who shall be his friends and neighbors in the better sense of these terms, and what shall be his religion and his vocation. In these choices is to be found most of the happiness and usefulness or the contrary in human life.

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