ANNOUNCER: So many of the problems faced by individuals and nations seem to be due to lack of money. No doubt most people feel that what they need most is money. But is that really their greatest need?

QUESTIONER: I believe there are many people today who are having difficulty in making ends meet, and I think there are many more who feel they simply don't have enough money coming in to get ahead. We often get to the point where we feel that the greatest need is for additional income.

SPEAKER: Money is the method of exchange, and we obviously need money to meet genuine needs— food, clothing, transportation, housing education. But let's face it, the root problem is not income earned but our wrong thought about it.

Many times we hear people say, "If I only had a little more money." In my own experience, when I was getting twenty-five dollars a week I felt that if I could only get thirty dollars a week I'd be on easy street. But when I got thirty dollars a week, it was still five dollars short.

Now, it's perfectly true that on the surface the need seems to be for money. But, underneath, it is something deeper than that. Our fears, worries, limitations, beliefs in inadequacy, and so forth, take form and shape in human experience as limited income. And when we correct our misapprehensions about the source of income, the availability of it, or the amount of it, we're going to see an improvement in those things.

QUESTIONER: But it is natural for one to want a better living and to improve his lot, isn't it?

SPEAKER: Yes indeed it is. But we've got to look higher than human activity and money to find true happiness or security if our human needs are to be met. We must look to God. Turning to the Bible, we learn that God, who is infinite Spirit, is the eternal source of our real income.

The Apostle Paul warned against worshiping money as our true income. He said (I Tim. 6:10), "The love of money is the root of all evil." He also said (Phil. 4: 19), "My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

QUESTIONER: You mean spiritual needs will be satisfied?

SPEAKER: Yes, but also human needs. Jesus said (Matt. 6:33), "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Christ Jesus' teachings show the clear understanding that he had of man's relationship to God, which equipped him with ability, inspiration, intelligence, and spiritual power; and it equips us with those qualities—with all God's qualities.

QUESTIONER: How does being equipped with these qualities help our financial situation?

SPEAKER: The understanding of God and His nature and the fact that He is supplying man continually with right ideas enable men to utilize God's ideas and thus provide food, clothing, whatever's necessary. It was Jesus' utilization of divine ideas that enabled him to provide food for the multitudes, to feed five thousand people, to find cash for taxes, to overcome every limitation. And he assured his followers (Matt. 6:8), "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him."

The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, states (p. 206), "In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes,—Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply." Our greatest need is to wake up to man's relationship to God.

QUESTIONER: How does this help somebody desperately in need of more money?

SPEAKER: Well, money doesn't rule our experience if we understand man's relationship to God, "who giveth us richly all things to enjoy" (I Tim. 6:17). There isn't any shortage there.

The answer to one person's financial problem might not be more income; it might be just a better sense of care and economy in place of waste and extravagance. It might be the replacing of laziness with industriousness, enterprise, and initiative.

We need to stop thinking of ourselves as mortals, limited to a certain job with a certain meager income, and get a brand new view of ourselves as the expression of God's being, possessing every quality of God and the ability to express it.

Expressing God's qualities has value; they are appreciated, recognized, and consequently rewarded —in pay, wages, salary, commissions, bonuses. The awareness of this spiritual fact brings into experience whatever is needed to improve or adjust the human situation.

QUESTIONER: But we're going to need more than this to cope with our needs today. It costs money to implement these ideas.

SPEAKER: The same power that supplies the ideas supplies the ability and the means to implement them.

For example, a news item related that some villages in Vietnam had their food supply cut off and the villagers were starving because all the regular means of transporting the food into the villages were blocked. An American civilian employee had the idea of using some junks for transporting the food in a completely different way from what had ever been done before, and in a short time the supplies again began to reach those in need.

Well, their need was for food, but the idea of the way to transport it is what brought the food into their experience. This just hints at spiritual direction and guidance, which are always available to man.

Actually, there isn't any human need that can't be met with the right idea. Men's real need is for spiritual ideas and not for matter things. We read in Science and Health (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." Now, divine Love is God.

How does God, Spirit, meet human needs which seem to be material? He meets human needs with ideas. God is divine Mind, supplying ideas, and mankind's real need is for right ideas.

QUESTIONER: You mean, then, we take these ideas and utilize them?

SPEAKER: That's it, exactly. The answers might not come to the individual as he outlines them or thinks they should come, but willingness to listen for and humbly follow divine direction brings the good into our experience.

QUESTIONER: Are you talking about a complete dependence on God to solve our everyday needs and our problems?

SPEAKER: Yes, but I don't believe that anybody can sit in a rocking chair and pray for something good and expect it to fall into his lap. Man's job is to express God. And in the business of expressing Him, the individual will find his supply of money appearing.

Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 307), "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies." She goes on, "Never ask for to-morrow: it is enough that divine Love is an ever present help; and if you wait, never doubting, you will have all you need every moment."