From the Editors March 5, 2012 Issue

Watching horizons and trends

The Editors

From quantum physicists to preschool teachers, people today are aware of the fact that what we think affects, and even determines, what happens to us. This close connection between a person’s thought and his or her resulting experience isn’t some novel discovery, of course—people have been talking about it for years. Most of the time, though, the topic is considered from the standpoint of the individual. One person’s thoughts equal one person’s experience. It can be helpful, too, to consider the ways a whole culture’s general trends of thinking affect the world.

Jesus encouraged people to develop a perceptiveness to these general, changing trends of world thought. “What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch,” he counseled (Mark 13:37)—a biblical beacon that’s printed on the cover of every Sentinel. Watching the mental horizon judiciously for new courses of thought gives us grounds to distinguish good ones from bad ones and to pray about them intelligently.

We can actually address a worldwide trend of thought as straightforwardly as we address our own individual state of thinking.