Editorial April 22, 1944 Issue

Some Thoughts on Loving

John Randall Dunn

Moses and Christ Jesus stressed the law, Love thy neighbor as thyself. Just what can this mean? someone may ask. Carlyle speaks of the "golden calf of self-love." Very evidently, then, the love of oneself commended by the Hebrew Lawgiver and the great Master is not the contemplation of or undue affection for one's so-called material selfhood. Can it be anything less than the recognition and understanding of man as the Father knows him? If God, the great First Cause, is infinite Love itself, must not man, His expression, His image, be lovable, lovely, and loving?

A little girl had been quite disobedient and got into some unfortunate mischief. When she awakened to her error, she realized she must face her mother and make a clean breast of her wrongdoing. This she did with evident dread of the reprimand and punishment which she felt certain awaited her. To her amazement, instead of a stern or angry rebuke, the mother looked at her with earnest, searching eyes and said quietly, "That wasn't a bit like you!" That girl, grown to woman's estate now looks back at this experience as the most effective punishment she had ever received. The mother had voiced a great truth—that the disobedience, the unlovely deed, and the willfulness that prompted it did not belong to real selfhood, and therefore they were no part of man as the loving expression of God, who is Love.

Does this mean, someone may ask, that all misdemeanors of childhood might be handled thus? As to the parent's mental attitude, emphatically yes; as to the question of punishment, should not this depend on the child's response to this loving, scientific approach? If the parent has not been able to break through the mesmerism of self-will, self-justification, and errancy, the child certainly should be taught that disobedience to Principle brings inevitable penalty, and that the punishment will be mitigated only as the error is repented of and forsaken.

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