Article March 30, 1992 Issue

Reason for hope

Do things look bleak? There's a powerful, spiritual basis for prayer and for the expectation of a positive outcome.

Manfred Söllinger

About forty years ago I was a high-school student in East Germany. The political system there was not my choice. Marxism and so-called scientific materialism were the official ideologies, and tolerance for other beliefs was very limited.

One day it became clear to me that even under the worst circumstances every person has the God-given capability of comparing different statements, detecting errors, and thus getting a better view of truth. This insight about people's innate ability to reason was quite comforting to me at the time.

Later I became a Christian Scientist and found this statement in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy: "God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience." Doesn't this suggest that we can expect reason and conscience to be expressed, even where they seem absent at the moment? Science and Health also tells us, "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence."

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