Editorial September 2, 1985 Issue

Deeper spirituality, more tender humanity

WILLIAM E. MOODY

It is relatively easy to track the advances in technology and the improvements in the outward conditions of people's lives as civilization moves forward. Yet a more important element of progress may not be so readily measured by observing only the quantity and sophistication of the "things" around us. That element has to do with the quality of human thought and its effect on people's sense of purpose, worth, and fulfillment.

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves some different questions about what progress actually means rather than assuming it is essentially defined by cordless telephones or supersonic transatlantic airline flights, as useful as such things are. We might ask, for example, if there is substantially more real joy being expressed in the world today. With progress, this should be a readily acknowledged fact of life. Is there greater integrity, wisdom, holiness, purity, goodness, peace, and love? With progress, these qualities should be widely apparent, broadening in both their outward expression and their influence in human experience.

Such qualities are, in truth, spiritual qualities. And any significant measure of mankind's growth must take these into account, for without an expanding sense of real good, mankind is in fact going nowhere. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, sums up in one sentence what it is that progress should manifest. She writes: "Each successive period of progress is a period more humane and spiritual."^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 26.} One might conclude that when the "humane and spiritual" are not so evident, real progress is lacking.