Editorial June 23, 1934 Issue

Proper Planning

W. Stuart Booth

Men generally are taught to believe that they live in and because of matter, that each has a mind of his own resident in brain, and that life, success, and happiness are dependent upon human planning, endeavors, and accomplishments. Quite naturally, in all too many instances, this leads to selfish ambition and outlining, which are prompted by human will and fear of the future. Frequently personal planning involves conflicting interests, strife, and disappointment. And yet spiritual understanding shows that proper planning is requisite and desirable. The writer of Proverbs, recognizing the error of the tendency to indulge human will, offered corrective advice in these words: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Christ Jesus trusted God with all his heart; he leaned not upon material sense, for in all his ways or thinking he acknowledged God as the only Mind, the Father of all; and so he was divinely directed in all his paths, in everything he said and did. The Master knew that much human outlining, with its associated anxiety and apprehension, springs from the false belief that life is in matter; hence, he counseled that thought be turned from contemplation of the material body to consideration of spiritual reality. Jesus knew that human experience is primarily and wholly mental; therefore, he advised that men should seek "first the kingdom of God," the government of good; then all things needful would be added, was his assuring promise. Therein Christ Jesus pointed the way to overcome willful outlining, the way to replace the vanity and disappointments of misdirected human planning with the peace and providence which attend and follow dependence upon divine directing.

Mary Baker Eddy, a humble and obedient follower of the Way-shower, learned to listen for God's voice, and thus to preclude mere human planning for herself and for the Cause she established. In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and her other writings she consistently enjoins Christian Scientists to work and pray for spiritual understanding, to subjugate human will to the divine, to wait on God and trust His unerring and adequate guidance and government. Her teachings reveal God as divine Love, the impartial Giver of all good, as infinite Mind and Truth, the source of all true ideas, as perfect Principle, the law-creating and law-controlling governor of all reality. On page 467 of the textbook we find this inspired and assuring statement of the truth: "Having no other gods, turning to no other but the one perfect Mind to guide him, man is the likeness of God, pure and eternal, having that Mind which was also in Christ."

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