Article October 31, 2011 Issue

Bridging the river of ‘otherness’

A spiritual answer to partisanship, built on brotherly and sisterly love.

By Jeremy Carper

What cannot love and righteousness achieve for the race? All that can be accomplished, and more than history has yet recorded. All good that ever was written, taught, or wrought comes from God and human faith in the right. Through divine Love the right government is assimilated, the way pointed out, the process shortened, and the joy of acquiescence consummated.

–Mary Baker Eddy, The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, p. 292

It must have been a high school assignment where I ran across a provocative remark made by Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French thinker. In his 1669 work Pensées (“Thoughts”), he queried, “Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Prayer for government