True economy and the law of Love

There is much speculation at this time as to how countries’ economies will evolve following the pandemic. Many theories have been put forward as to how small businesses with limited capital will be able to restart—or not. Scenarios envisaging the growth of organizations that are well capitalized abound.

The Bible reveals that the safest and most secure basis on which to build a sound economy is the understanding of God’s nature. Individuals in the Bible who put their trust in God were able to live fruitful and accomplished lives—and to bless others abundantly. Abraham, Moses, Joseph, and Elijah exemplified faith and trust in a God who provides all good to His beloved creation. Christ Jesus, the ultimate demonstrator of God’s law of infinite good, proved that God, divine Love, provides for every human need. On two occasions he fed thousands with a few loaves and fish, which multiplied both times as the food was shared (see Matthew 15:32–38 and John 6:1–13). 

Economies today are believed to be based on the management and regulation of money. Factors include instruments of labor, material resources, and market forces. By contrast, the biblical examples of abundant provision were based on faith that God, Spirit, would supply every need. The children of Israel were sustained by God in the wilderness, such that for forty years “they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not” (Nehemiah 9:21).

In all the scriptural instances of God’s preservation of His children, there is no record of abundance and prosperity for some and poverty or hardship for others. All were equally blessed through the understanding of God’s law of love, which controls both thought and action.

Christian Science teaches that the correct understanding of God reveals Spirit as the only substance. This substance, being spiritual, is both good and omnipresent. It is not controlled by human will or endeavor; instead, human experience patterns the divine through the understanding of God, Spirit.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote in 1899 of imperialism and monopoly as dangerous (see The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 129). Sole power to exploit resources and to control markets, distribution of goods, and labor—all leading to accumulation of vast wealth for a few and deprivation for others—is not in line with God’s law of equality defined in the Bible. St. Paul wrote, “I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality” (II Corinthians 8:13, 14).

Jesus showed us that trusting God to reveal the divine nature in the fullness of its goodness results in the manifestation of sufficiency in our daily experience. He did not rely on material law or pray to an anthropomorphic God. He rejected the evidence of the physical senses as a factor that could influence, relying instead solely on the understanding of his heavenly Father’s endowments, which proved the reality of the ever-presence of God, good.

In all the scriptural instances of God’s preservation of His children, there is no record of abundance and prosperity for some and poverty or hardship for others.

Christian Science teaches that God is infinite good and that He does not know evil. God’s infinitude excludes the influence or supposed power of discordant, prejudiced, prepossessed, or skewed material conditions. God’s law, expressing divine Principle, governs, controls, and supports God’s creation with unerring direction, perfect justice, and unchanging harmony. It nullifies opinions, material laws, and human will. Divine Principle is impartial, undeviating, and the only cause. Understood on this basis, the economy, or management of human affairs, is held prayerfully in the spiritual space of harmony—the jurisdiction and regulation of God’s spiritual law, controlling all action. When this law is spiritually perceived, it is manifested in a way we can understand and experience in our present state.

God’s law is also the enforcement of morality. It regulates action to eliminate conflict, exploitation, unfair competition, belief of superiority, etc. When modeled after the divine, human law becomes a power for good. 

The belief that a nation’s economy is humanly controlled and regulated is allied predominantly to human will. The willful determination as to how something should function or be resolved is basically the desire to impose one’s own beliefs, wants, and plans on others. It’s what the Bible calls “the carnal mind” (Romans 8:7), and would materially influence and judge people—their motives, aspirations, and abilities. It is a form of self-righteousness, believing that a personal selfhood knows what is best. 

True wisdom acknowledges that divine Mind, God, is the only real “I” or Ego, and that this Mind alone guides and controls thought, and therefore action. Faith and trust in God as the giver of only good enlarges our perception of true economy and reveals the substance of Spirit manifested and witnessed by God’s whole creation.

Jesus explained: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. . . . Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? . . . But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:24, 31, 33).

God’s kingdom is infinite, ever-present, and all-embracing. Recognizing this, we become conscious of an economy based not on the pecuniary concerns, hopes, and wishes of a few, but on God’s beneficence, the operation of the divine law of Love, which is the reign of harmony on earth and includes all.

This has often been proved in my life. A few years ago, my wife and I needed to move house, and after we had spent a number of months looking for a suitable location, our prayers were answered through a perfect home being shown to us in another province of South Africa. We traveled to see this residence and signed an offer to purchase it. The cost of the new home was substantially higher than the selling price of our existing home.

Driving home, we heard on the news that there had been a huge collapse of banks in the United States and that economies were threatened worldwide. This was the start of the 2008 global financial crisis. 

Instead of thinking that we had made a mistake in purchasing the new property, we continued to affirm in prayer that God, divine Mind, was in control and the source of our supply. We saw that this new home was an unfoldment of God’s law for us and therefore not related to material conditions or events. After buying and moving to the new home, and even carrying out a small renovation on it, we found that we had more funds in our savings accounts than previously. I recognized this as a proof of God’s provision.

This promise from Psalms encapsulates the divine economy as permanent in our lives: “The goodness of God endureth continually” (52:1).