Article July 3, 1995 Issue

Cutting through moral confusion

Beulah M. Roegge

The extra money was in my hand. I stood in the bank lobby and debated returning it to the teller who had made the mistake. We needed the money, and the bank was one of those faceless institutions I had come to distrust. Suddenly, I remembered something I had been told—if a teller came up with a shortage at the end of a day, he or she had to make it up out of personal funds. My heart went out to that teller, and I marched right back to the window and handed in the bills. I forgot about my own need for money. I'd found the right thing to do, had done it, and it felt good.

Years later, after I'd started to study Christian Science, I thought more about this incident. At the time I hadn't taken it lightly and had been shocked at my hesitation in returning the money. It was a wake-up call to the fact that I was morally drifting, and it was one of several experiences that made me welcome the actual Science of Christianity.

With the light that my study of this Science threw on the human scene, I could understand the mental forces that had confused me. At that time, big business seemed to be the enemy. The glory of making the United States a leading industrial nation was tarnished by a greater public awareness of a few far from glorious practices that had crept into our free enterprise system—practices not unlike what is going on today in some countries that are gaining a new and heady freedom from repressive governments.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Cutting through moral confusion

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access