Editorial July 13, 1974 Issue

Finding Our Place Through Spiritual Commitment

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Many people are conscious of having commitments. Some people seem not to have them. However, to try to avoid commitment—a popular exercise these days—in order to maximize the options open to one, and to maintain flexibility of action, is a kind of commitment in itself. This is, perhaps, negative or passive commitment, and it frequently leaves us with an uneasy feeling of itinerancy. Christian Science explains how we can make constructive and positive commitments based on an understanding of spiritual reality, and so gain a conviction of right placement. In Science, man—God's infinite self-expression—always has a purpose and a place in Mind. Our real identity or selfhood is not faced by various material options but is forever fixed in Spirit and is unfolding there. And divine Spirit is always maintaining the infinitude—and therefore the right placement—of His idea, man.

Commitment, looked at with spiritual facts in mind, takes on higher meaning. And when these facts are accepted as the basis for our human activities, we're helped to do those things which are sound and which prove to be richly productive. And this moderates any overcommitment to the corporation, political party, or social club. Spiritually impelled commitment brings and maintains a consciousness of right place and of satisfaction in the measure that we yield to it.

Should men entertain a merely material or mortal sense of place—believing man to be a physical speck placed in an immense and sometimes cruel cosmos—they may be deluded into committing themselves to causes having negative or even grossly destructive aims. Sadly, human beings sometimes commit themselves with total sincerity to causes that may claim to lead to justice and freedom but may try to achieve their objectives by aggression and violence—by riot, kidnapping, skyjacking, property destruction, and so on.

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