No doubt there's still a long way to go. But a renewed interest in higher ethical standards for business and industry is making the news. It's a sign worth noting—and supporting.

Take, for example, a Pennsylvania company that handles auto parts. Forbes magazine reports that the company insists on "high moral standards from new hires. ... Lying is grounds for firing. Gossip and backbiting are firmly discouraged." And performance reviews go beyond typical benchmarks of sales productivity, work attendance, and the like. Performance is rated for "employees on how well they 'attempt to promote goodwill.'"

Forbes headlined its article "Righteousness pays" (Sept. 22, 1997, pp. 200–201). It described how the company has been growing at a rate of 25% each year since the mid-1980s and last year netted $16 million in profits on a total volume of $160 million. The company is doing right by its employees and its customers. And with a solid base of honesty and the motive to be of real service to others, the business is succeeding.

Perhaps this kind of success story—where people's lives and their jobs are improved and where a business makes steady progress—demonstrates something even deeper than the potential salutary effect of ethics and high moral standards. Those very ethics and the morality itself really represent a transcendent spiritual power. This perspective is reinforced in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. In the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she observes: "Honesty is spiritual power" (p. 453). And in another passage, though it is referring specifically to the ministry of Christian Science healing, a wider lesson is clear. She writes: "You should practise well what you know, and you will then advance in proportion to your honesty and fidelity,—qualities which insure success in this Science ..." (p. 449). These qualities directly reflect the activity of the law of God.

When we understand how God's law actually governs our experience here and now, we gain a profoundly spiritual basis for everything we endeavor to do—whether it's our individual work performance on the job or the broader, service-oriented goals and enterprises of our company or business itself. Then from that spiritual basis, a solid foundation is established for ethics to take firm root and stay the course of a company's life—for the business and its employees to serve the larger good of society in a genuinely progressive, productive manner. The Bible offers this promise: "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever" (Isa. 32:17).

One of the things we discover when we take the time to see it in others is that people naturally want to do right, to be honest and unselfish. Why? Because the true nature of each of us is the reflection of God, our creator. God, divine Truth, Principle, and Love, created us to express Him through the native spiritual qualities that are the substance of our real identity. Qualities such as integrity, strength, righteousness—even spiritual purity and unselfed love.

For employees, supervisors, managers, or CEOs, it's important to recognize that these spiritual qualities are actually inherent in everyone as God's reflection—everyone in our company or business, every client or customer. This promotes a spiritual atmosphere of thought that permeates everything we do. Understanding and drawing upon this fundamental truth makes us better employees, better managers. It makes a better business. It makes our jobs of real value and purpose.

What could be a truer measure of success than to see a company and its employees consistently expressing righteousness in moral and spiritual qualities, conducting business according to God's law, and bringing blessings to their communities. An auto parts company can do this. So can a computer company, an airline company, a dairy farm, a bakery, a dry cleaning store, a publishing house. Each one of us—and the quality of our thinking—is essential to that successful enterprise.

William E. Moody
Editor