Article March 7, 1988 Issue

Religion that makes a difference

For religion to be practical it must help us live better lives and change the world around us. Whether or not this occurs largely depends on what and how we worship.

Evelyn M. S. Duckett

Not long ago I was talking to a teen-age boy who hadn't shown much interest in religion before. He said to me: "Christian Science is the kind of religion I'd like to have. It seems to help you with the things you have to do."

What he had to do at the time was to pass his school examinations, which he was finding difficult. He wanted very much to be a pilot, but that meant many more exams over a period of years. And this seemed to him a daunting prospect. I assured him that Christian Science could certainly be of great help to him both in this and in everything else he might be called upon to do. But how was I to explain to him just how it does this in a way that he could understand?

Religion is primarily about worshiping God. But this worship needs to be more than ritual observance, however sincere. Worship, in its highest sense, is a spiritual response to God within individual consciousness that changes thought radically. Then experience changes too. What makes people want to worship? Perhaps a sense of reverence and wonder, an awareness of a power greater than their own, a glimpse of what the word infinite really means—something like what we sometimes feel in a lonely place of great natural beauty, only more so.

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