Editorial November 6, 1978 Issue

The growth we need

Geoffrey J. Barratt

For several years there's been an active debate over questions of growth, including population growth, industrial and economic growth. Such quandaries facing mankind must be seen, ultimately, to have only metaphysical answers. And when these answers are found, proper human conditions will come about as a result of spiritual understanding replacing mortal reasoning.

The growth we need is spiritual growth. This is the only authentic growth, the only God-initiated and God-permitted growth. Genuine growth is impelled and forwarded by God. To begin growing from a spiritual basis, rather than from a material, temporal basis, is the new birth.

Spiritual growth is the enlightened sense of God's endless unfoldment of His divine nature in man and the universe. It is not something that happens to God but something that happens to us as we move ahead in the understanding of God. Mary Baker Eddy says of immortal Mind, God, "This Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good."^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 82–83;}