Conflict over resources and lifestyles doesn't have to be our model for the future of international development. We are at a crucial turning point where this pattern of thought can yield to a more universal, a more spiritual approach. That 's the view of , vice-president of the Argentine chapter of the International Development Association, the largest agency in the United Nations system. He has also served in the field of development with the International Labor Organization, the Organization of American States, and as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization. Here he talks about some experiences that led him to a new view of this field.
How did you become active in international relations?
While I was trained in economics and law and was already an active professional, I feel that my interest really was a consequence of having become acquainted with Christian Science. Before that, my world was much more limited, you might say While I was interested in the world, the study of Christian Science broadened the focal point of my interests and concerns.
I began to see that if there is truly one divine Mind and that if this Mind governs man and the universe, then it is necessary to translate this understanding into human terms by understanding how people and the international community relate to each other. This was my main reason for entering the field of international relations.
Many people feel discouraged about world conditions. How have you been able to pray to deal with such discouragement? Christian Science has enabled me to confront pessimism right where it begins, in thought. In the field of development, there have been many pessimistic theories regarding the scarcity of resources, that the large population of the world can't be adequately cared for. And from a solely material or social science point of view, the possibilities for resolving these dilemmas are tragically limited. That is to say, neither geography nor economics nor the other social sciences provide an adequate theory concerning development.
It seems to me, though, that true development is linked more to the metaphysical than the physical. Through the human sciences we arrive at skepticism and discouragement, as if the present situation were irreversible—as if there were countries destined to be prosperous and others which are condemned to be poor. Yet by relying on the spiritual truth that there is only one Mind, which guides each and everyone—the developed and the developing—we can reverse this skeptical view of the world.
What I often notice is terrible fears. The most fearful are the rich, that is to say, Europe is afraid of being invaded by emigrants from the east and by emigrants from Africa, and of extreme poverty. I believe that the United States also has a tremendous fear of being silently invaded by something that will harm them. These fears have to be faced from a metaphysical, a spiritual, perspective. I believe that in all of this there is enormous potential for healing through what I have learned in Christian Science.
What 's the reason for this hopeful feeling? Many years ago I went through the experience of being exiled. My family and I had to leave the country due to conditions related to political intolerance and social violence. When we left, I left behind all that implied security. I was at that time a prosperous professional, and overnight I had to go into a desert, it seemed, without any security.
For a time I was able to work for an international organization in another country. But there came the day when my contract was completed. I couldn't remain in that country and I couldn't return home. I felt that I was in a position like that of the children of Israel before the Red Sea with the Egyptians in pursuit behind them; this seemed to paralyze me with fear.
I thought about the healings of paralysis that Jesus accomplished. I thought of paralysis in metaphysical terms— the inability to think clearly, the feeling of being terrorized, fear for my family's welfare. One day in the middle of this crisis, when I thought there was no solution, I met a taxi driver who was looking for an address. I needed a taxi, so we struck an agreement that he would take me where I needed to go, if he could first go to the address he was looking for and stop for five minutes.
The place he was looking for turned out to be a Christian Science Reading Room. When he came out he handed me a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy and asked me if I knew of the book. I said no.
What struck me most at the time was the attitude of this man. He was outwardly poor, in a shabby taxi. Nevertheless, he expressed a sense of happiness and of security that I lacked. In that confrontation between my spiritual attitude and that of the taxi driver, he showed me that he was a man who was greatly richer than I. This caused a very great spiritual commotion within me and caused me to reassess many times my own sense of wealth, prestige, and security. As a result I later returned to the Reading Room and bought a Bible and a copy of Science and Health.
Fear can place us in a situation where there appears to be no way out—seemingly no way to go forward nor the possibility of going back. For me, I have seen that the only thing we can do is what I would call taking a leap forward. For me that leap was to take hold of Christian Science. This produced a profound change in me, in my attitude toward God, toward my neighbor, and I believe from that moment on my life has been transformed. I have seen that God's ways are infinite.
Exile made our whole family grow. We became acquainted with new countries, we learned other languages, we gained true riches, if by riches we mean wisdom and a broader outlook. My children are very oriented to international things. They have been able to resolve much earlier than I did in my life the concept of the universality of man. It is interesting to see how they read the news about what is happening in Southeast Asia, in Africa, or in Europe. They can rapidly feel understanding and love for the people who are suffering.
You'd mentioned to me earlier that there was a preparation that had made it possible for you to respond so readily to the man who first told you about Christian Science, the taxi driver. I had a passion for the law because of its relation to justice and liberty. But when I finished my studies, I had the impression that law was a purely formal structure. From a logical point of view the law seemed perfectly logical, but I saw that it could be used by a tyrant or a democracy. Next I did further studies in economics. But I didn't find the justice that I was looking for there. Next I studied sociology, which was more concerned with individual and collective human conduct. While it's not easy to explain, I realized that I was only getting fragments and that what I was seeking in these studies was a vain attempt of human understanding to give an explanation for what I came to see was a desire to truly understand God and man's relationship to Him. I found in Christian Science what I had been searching for in law, economics, and sociology.
Christian Science has been of immense help in my work, especially from the perspective of public service. For example, how to avoid the sensualism of power, how to understand that a post in government is an opportunity to serve, not to serve oneself. Or, how not to be drawn in by sociological relativism: The theory that nothing is good or bad—normal or abnormal—except that it depends on the statistical frequency with which a certain behavior occurs. These are two temptations that modern men and women face. The most devastating temptation may be the belief that there are no absolute values, that truth and error can be mixed together and taken in small doses. This issue has been one in which Christian Science has been particularly helpful. Christian Science doesn't attempt to reconcile truth and error. This is radical, but truth is radical and meets the onto-logical void that we seem to be confronted with today
Is there a hunger for such truth today in the world? Yes, there is. The most widespread hunger that I have seen is hunger for truth, the hunger to experience the presence of God, to feel that we are in a secure world. We hear much today of people living on the margin, at the very edges of life. Marginality is a concept that man is separated from God, from good. The most marginalized form of living would be to believe that man can live separate from God. It is from such belief that conflict springs. Mortal mind—the carnal mentality that the Apostle Paul refers to in the New Testament—lives on the theory of continual conflict. It may be a theory of conflict between classes, between the sexes, or between generations.
In the midst of such materialism, it is necessary to understand the unity of good, the unity of God and man. If we simply think of the problem of underdevelopment as the product of certain material conditions, we'll never understand the real need. Underdevelopment is a product primarily of mental conditions. And Christian Science spiritualizes thought. This is what I see as the great contribution of Christian Science. It puts an end to old patterns of thought. Isn't this what Christ Jesus did? There was formalism, dogmatism, Pharisaism; they were all old patterns of thought that didn't permit the growth of human society. We are now at a turning point like that. And Christian Science does what the Master was doing, freeing thought from outmoded patterns.
So, you see your work in international development as allowing new patterns of thought. Exactly.
A new man, you might say? Yes. You see, development isn't exclusively an economic concept. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil."
When one is persuaded that progress is the law, development takes on a new light. It isn't simply economic development; it isn't making society go from an agrarian economy to being an atomic power on the basis of the enslavement of millions of people. The understanding of divine law has an immediate impact upon humanity, and we begin to see that man's purpose and nature are to reflect the source of his life, which is God, divine Mind.
This is a profound concept of healing, then, in the sense of mankind's mental transformation. In every post that I've held I never saw my work as a substitute for healing, but rather as a phase of healing work. As an ambassador, for example, it was essential for me to understand the nature of God as divine Mind and divine Love in order not to fall into chauvinism or xenophobia over national interests. This enabled me, then, to think in terms of all interests, to see that to defend the interests of one country implies including the whole international community in the idea of progress as God's law.
While serving as an advisor to the Secretary of Finance in Mexico, I had to go through periods of great economic instability in which scarcity, currency devaluations, and the international price of petroleum were countered by a deeper understanding of unlimited supply from God who is man's Life.
We need to broaden our concept of healing. I think that whatever we do, we have to be healers. Each Christian Scientist is a potential healer who has to heal the situation he or she is in, beginning with his own thought, confronting whatever would prevent him from expressing Life, Truth, and Love.
We need to go beyond theory, beyond scholasticism— knowledge that is unproven, theoretical. One of the things that Christian Science includes is a knowledge that the Science has to be demonstrated, put into actual practice.
The crisis we see today in the natural and social sciences, the belief that man is governed by material laws, all this was presaged in the last third of the nineteenth century by Mrs. Eddy. It is being undoubtedly verified. In this context, I believe that we can look to the future with great hope because Truth is emerging in this way.
Mrs. Eddy writes, again in Science and Health: "I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of Jesus, of his apostles, of the prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind. Other foundations there are none. All other systems—systems based wholly or partly on knowledge gained through the material senses— are reeds shaken by the wind, not houses built on the rock." To me this is the quotation that seems to tie together the idea that most of the humanly constructed systems—political, social, economic—have been found lacking, defeated, as it were, by reality, by the demand for an unlimited, spiritual view of man and his unbreakable relationship to God.
