Editorial June 14, 1975 ISSUE

A Dematerialized Sense of God

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Many societies are becoming increasingly secularized. Some people believe humanity has turned from God, Truth, to "other gods": political power, money, and so on. The worldly concerns of people frequently occupy their attention and energies much more than religious issues. Nevertheless, human beings are still faced with questions and dilemmas whose resolution must be essentially spiritual. People are perhaps more concerned than ever before with the meaning and purposes of a life that they haven't chosen to live but in which they seem inextricably involved.

Christian Science addresses itself to existential issues in a helpful, satisfying, and healing way, regardless of the level of society's secularization. People's sense of Deity, their belief in a Supreme Being, their admission or rejection of divine purpose and order, help set the texture and tone—for good or ill—of their community and country.

It's very likely that in the twentieth century mankind has lost much of its belief in an anthropomorphic, or manlike, God. This is a step which, ideally, precedes seeing God as impersonal Deity or divine Principle. Mrs. Eddy appreciated the broad consequences of how we, individually and collectively, view God. She writes, "Proportionately as the people's belief of God, in every age, has been dematerialized and unfinited has their Deity become good; no longer a personal tyrant or a molten image, but the divine Life, Truth, and Love,—Life without beginning or ending, Truth without a lapse or error, and Love universal, infinite, eternal."

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