Editorial January 2, 1978 Issue

Raising the quality of life

(See current series in The Christian Science Monitor.)

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Issues relating to our quality of life are being ventilated more than ever. "The 'quality of life' is a mouthfilling phrase," I read recently, "but at its very heart it concerns not the price of men and women, but their value; men should be weighed, and not counted. It is a dreadful thing that the phrase 'standards of living' refers only to the loot." Fred Inglis in New Statesman, August 19, 1977, p. 230;

The effective way to bring about the needed improvement in the quality of life is not simply to improve the quantity of goods available, or the quantity of government regulation of the behavior of industries, individuals, or society. It is to improve the quality of thought. It's only when this is being done that the most useful and necessary goods are produced and the most effective and constructive laws enacted.

What is high-quality thought? It is thought based on the realization that God is the only Life, that God is supreme, unique, peerless, perfect, All. Only by understanding what life essentially is—the expression and activity of divine Life—do we put down a stable, reliable foundation for supporting efforts to improve the lot of human beings. The standard view of life is that it has a beginning and end, that it is found in matter, that it can include limitation and misery. In Christian Science, man as the very expression of divine Life is governed only by Life and serves the purpose of Life to express itself.

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