Editorial May 14, 2018 Issue

Growing beyond ‘us and them’

Tony Lobl

As soon as I was old enough to watch the nightly news I was introduced to a world split between left- and right-wing viewpoints. My dad stood staunchly on one side of that political divide, and I “inherited” his “us and them” worldview. In fact, the first time I was old enough to vote in an election, “them” prevailed with a decisive victory, and I literally cried myself to sleep as election night results rolled in.

It was almost two decades before “us” got back into power, but in that time my priorities had been shifting away from identifying with a particular political worldview. I had been introduced to Christian Science, and as I gained in the spiritual perspective it teaches, I saw my identity in a different light. The model of manhood and womanhood it presents is God as divine Mind reflected in perfect, spiritual expressions of that Mind. And as I strove to identify myself and others in this way—as pure reflections of the one Mind—I saw that things that didn’t square with this model, including the “us and them” political thinking I’d grown used to, had to disappear through spiritual growth.

That didn’t mean my interest in politics had ended. Voting, keeping apprised of public policy developments, and keen news watching continued unabated. Playing an appropriate part in civic life was never in question. What was in question for me was where I was investing my hope for humanity’s progress. I felt increasingly inspired to trust God as an ever-present source of the answers needed to address local, national, and international concerns, and a line in a psalm captures why I felt that way. It says, “Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite” (Psalms 147:5).

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Bible Lens—May 14–20, 2018