PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEWS July 7, 1980 Issue

Military registration and the individual

Response to the resumption of registration of men of nineteen and twenty in the United States for a possible future military draft need not be one of fear or resentment. Young people in many other parts of the world face military service. All have the opportunity of recognizing that God is the divine Principle of man. He alone orders man's being. This ordering is divine unfoldment, God revealing and manifesting His own infinite nature. In this unfoldment, there can be no oppressive, afflictive development, because affliction is nowhere to be found in God. God is Love, and He is All—all Life, all Mind, all action. Man is Love's idea. Man lives in the only Life and is controlled by the only Mind, the divine.

Until humanity progresses spiritually to the point where Isaiah's familiar prophecy is fulfilled, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,"^{Isa. 2:4;} there will be a need to deal with tension and conflicts. Such conditions may lead a nation to defend itself militarily. Circumstances may require each of us—potential draftee, parent, wife, employer—to find his or her own highest response. This response, though, can be much more than a mere human reaction to circumstances: it can be an inspired response to the unchanging Truth, or Principle.

In the light of Christian Science, affliction and disruption are seen to be not actual conditions but material beliefs, stemming from the underlying misconception of man as something separate from God. This misconception is what spawns fear and robs the conscience of Truth's guidance.

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