Editorial April 27, 2020 Issue

Loving our neighbor during a nationwide lockdown

Tony Lobl

Consider telling yourself this each morning: “... I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing.”

This is what Mary Baker Eddy offered as “the scientific response” to the question “What am I?” She encouraged members of her church to recognize their innate agency to do good and help others because, she wrote, “... goodness identifies man with universal good” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 165).

Whether church members or not, we can all nurture this inherent truth about our “reason for existing,” especially when “self-isolating,” “social distancing,” and “lockdowns” are the demands of the day. When the natural joy of human interaction is restricted by the collective prioritizing of safety through separation, it can be a challenge to see how best to love our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus urged us to do.

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Bible Lens—April 27–May 3, 2020