Who's responsible for teaching people to be compassionate, honest, and morally courageous members of society? This has always been the work of parents. And, while business and educational institutions are newly considering their roles in character training, churches and synagogues have been at the heart of character education for a long time.
Work for and membership in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, provide countless opportunities to practice unselfishness, humility, integrity, and patience. These and other qualities of moral character inevitably accompany the spiritual growth that is a basic purpose of church. Church defends and advocates moral living—not always as a means to, but perhaps often as a result of, spiritualizing our thinking and living. Church does not consist of perfect humans. Instead, church calls and enfolds those who are willing to strive each day to understand life as spiritual, not material, and to conduct themselves according to the high moral standards of genuine Christianity.
The challenges one faces in this endeavor are often deceptively difficult. I recall that, as a teenager having my first branch church experience, I sometimes found it far easier to be patient and appreciative toward total strangers than to accord such consideration to a church member who appeared superficially pious! As I look back over several decades of branch church work, I realize that some of the strongest disagreements of my life, the most challenging personal struggles, and the biggest disappointments (in others and in myself) have taken place within branch church communities. But I've become more and more grateful for the extra push that church work has given me to grow in character and not let such experiences embitter or consume me. I think this statement of Mrs. Eddy's goes a long way toward describing the value of church activity as I've known it: "A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 354.
