Editorial June 17, 1961 Issue

Seeking True Status

Helen Wood Bauman

Status seeking cannot be said to be a modern trend. Human pride is as old as human thought. Christ Jesus rebuked the status seekers of his day. He said (Luke 20:46), "Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts."

In one of his parables the Master warned against seeking unearned honors, recommending that when one is invited to a feast, he sit down in the lowest room and wait for the host to bid him "go up higher." Jesus ended his lesson with these memorable words (Luke 14:11): "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

Christian Science repeats this great lesson of humility. It rebukes pride and requires that its adherents seek the eternal status of man, made in God's likeness— spiritual, sinless, obedient to the Father, and possessing dominion over all the earth. Scientific Christianity insists that the mortal sense of man is unreal, an imposition of evil, and that it must be made to disappear along with the love of prestige, conceit, self-seeking, and ruthless disparaging of others that distinguish mortals.

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