Editorial June 20, 1983 Issue

Moderating human relationships

CAROLYN B. SWAN

God and His family of spiritual ideas dwell in total accord. There is no room in infinite Love for partiality or hatred. God's beloved likeness, man, expresses one infinite, invariable love.

Human affection, however, may seem far from impartial. Clinging attachment to those we care for tends to go with cool detachment toward those we don't. It's hard to see, sometimes, that moderation is needed. Yet in her book Miscellaneous Writings Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, strongly repudiates the mortal sense of love/hate. She writes, "Evil was, and is, the illusion of breaking the First Commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me:' it is either idolizing something and somebody, or hating them: it is the spirit of idolatry, envy, jealousy, covetousness, superstition, lust, hypocrisy, witchcraft."^{Mis., p. 123.}

This emphatic denouncement of personal sense shouldn't surprise us. After all, when Christ Jesus was asked to name the great commandment in the law, he answered the question and went even further: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."^{Matt. 22:37–39.}

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