Editorial July 29, 1961 Issue

Forsaking Worldliness

Helen Wood Bauman

In the midst of a worldly age, Christian Science bids mankind forsake the lure and excitement of matter and devote themselves to the development of spirituality. And this they can do regardless of the human circumstances in which they may find themselves. Each individual must change his thought of man and the universe to conform to the truth of being as Christian Science reveals it; he must know creation as God, or Spirit, makes it—spiritual and perfect.

By his life example Christ Jesus taught the need for every individual to extricate himself from all worldliness, not by dying but by becoming conscious of the world of Spirit. When he was about to leave this earth, Jesus prayed God on behalf of those who followed him (John 17:15), "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." And Mary Baker Eddy advocates the same ideal when she says in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 287), "Love lived in a court or cot is God exemplified, governing governments, industries, human rights, liberty, life." We can be in the world, helping it, but never harmed by it.

One can possess great wealth, fill an important position in the professional or political world, or organize a great industry and yet be free from worldliness, but only if he uses his wealth or position to subserve the purposes of Love. On the other hand, one can possess no material wealth, hold no important position, and yet express intense worldliness—belief in corporeal personality, fear, envy, poverty, dependence upon drugs, interest in ribald literature and drama or other aspects of sense excitement.

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