Editorial August 21, 1954 Issue

ESTABLISHING HARMONIOUS RELATIONSHIPS

Harold Molter

Disordered and disturbed human relationships originate in the false belief that man is material. This concept of man results in misunderstanding, fear, selfishness, lack, and the belief of many minds. In the allegory depicting a material creation Cain slew Abel. He did so because he thought that God favored his brother's offering above his own. He misunderstood the nature of God and man, thought of himself and his brother as men of clay, and failed to recognize his own moral deficiency. This resulted in jealousy and in the disordered thinking which impelled him to slay the object of his hatred.

Referring to this experience, Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 541), "Jealous of his brother's gift, Cain seeks Abel's life, instead of making his own gift a higher tribute to the Most High." How often misunderstanding and its baneful effects could be avoided, if men would learn to glorify God, and thereby find peace and advancement through seeking their neighbor's welfare and progress instead of merely their own. The grateful acknowledgment of the impartial and universal nature of God's ever-present love and provision for all His ideas is a great deterrent and healer of all discordant human relationships.

Jesus said (Matt. 23:9), "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Self-love, or selfishness, is the stone which blocks the road to the realization of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. It results in a limited and distorted sense of true brotherhood. But self-forgetfulness seeks to do God's will and harmonizes existence through the recognition of the universal brotherhood of man as the one family of God's ideas dwelling at peace in the one perfect Mind.

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