Editorial January 7, 1967 Issue

How Civilized Are We?

Helen Wood Bauman

From one point of view we are living in an age that is civilized in that many nations are technically advanced and enjoy a reasonably ordered stage of cultural development. Where Christianity predominates, legislation provides a high degree of moral imperatives, and there is police protection. Such civilization represents many centuries of refinement of thought, worship, knowledge, manners, and taste. So immense is this subject that it is difficult even to scan the amazing achievements of the Christian community.

Modern research and the examination of contemporary aboriginal tribal customs show that men originally lived much as animals do, without clothing or houses and having to search daily for food. They were cruel and vengeful. Their morals were undeveloped and their sex relations promiscuous. The real man, made in God's likeness as revealed by the Scriptures, was practically unrepresented.

Christianity speeds the recognition of moral and spiritual values. These are as eternal as God, Spirit, but have come to light slowly through the power of Deity asserting His presence and defining Himself to the receptive thought. The animal cannot forever resist the spiritual. Christian Science explains why this is true: because the spiritual is real and the animal is unreal; the spiritual is true and the animal is false; the spiritual is immortal and the animal is mortal—subject to dissolution.

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