Editorial May 29, 1948 Issue

IMPROVING HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

Paul Stark Seeley

A practitioner of Christian Science was one day looking over the list of those he was helping and to his surprise noted that more than half the number had problems pertaining to their human relationships. Some were having difficult marital and other family relationships; others were uncertain about getting married; still others were involved in difficulties with associates in business, professional, or social life. Furthermore, among those who were seeking help for physical problems it was plain that in several instances the difficulty was the result of unhappy personal relationships resulting in worry, fear, irritation, resentment, or hate.

All of which impressed the practitioner with the vital importance of the whole human family gaining a better basic concept of relationship and the source from whence it derives. As he thought of the Master's life and teachings, he realized what a very large part of his work was devoted to helping people to understand how to get on with one another. He taught that unfeigned love for God and man is the only thing that will ever bring harmony in human relationships; that one must love one's neighbor's real selfhood equally with one's own true selfhood and must act toward another with the consideration with which he would have the other act toward him.

Jesus saw that a major obstacle to better relationships is the common human tendency for one so to exaggerate what seems to him wrong in his neighbor that he minimizes or loses sight of what is wrong in himself. His admonition, "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matt. 7:5), has been much more often read than observed.

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