Article December 18, 1995 Issue

The foundation of good government

Allan Arthur Bradley

Mankind has tried many methods of government over the centuries. As each method has come and gone, and history has recorded varying degrees of success, one thing has become clear. Human government, in whatever form, seems to be a mixture of good and bad elements. We can see this in our current time. Progressive steps are taken, but they often appear to be accompanied by the evils of economic turmoil, ethnic, religious, and class polarization, and war. Why are these efforts to obtain more enlightened government seeming to involve distress and misery?

To answer this question, we need to think deeply about who or what really creates and governs man. Like government, humanity in general tends to be good and bad, with one quality or the other predominating, depending on the circumstances. Within this context, it is no surprise, then, to find government "echoing" this pattern. because it is made up of people.

How disappointing it would be if that were the final stop in our search for truth. But it isn't. We need to look much deeper, into the actual spiritual nature of the man created by God and made in His image and likeness. This man—the being you and I really are—is wholly good. God's man is not a mixture of good and evil, but has the ability to express only good. We learn to use this ability—instead of being led astray by the belief that we can be evil—through study of the Bible in the light of Christian Science.

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