Many people around the world are striving to be better neighbors relative to the environment—from the simple act of not littering, to using less fossil fuel for transportation, to the development of advanced technologies for energy conservation. But while individuals and organizations work to improve the physical environment, there is a great demand to bring a mental purification to all that we do. This purification leads to actions that make for a cleaner physical environment.
Mary Baker Eddy discovered the Comforter promised by Jesus for all humanity (see John 14:16, 17, 26; 15:26; 16:7). This “Spirit of truth” comforts people by showing them what God truly is. It gives us the tools to prove that peace and health belong to us all because each of us is God’s child. It gives us the tools to practice a higher environmental care. This Comforter lifts humanity from the perception that existence consists mostly, or even exclusively, of material things, people, and situations—a perception that everything revolves around humanity—to the true sense of things, according to which the universe manifests infinite God, Spirit.
That the universe is God-centered, not in a literal, but in a spiritual sense, is an over-arching theme of the Bible. For example, though each of the Ten Commandments (see Ex. 20:3–17) is essential, together they illustrate a spirit of living that recognizes God as the basis of everything, and that the purpose of living is to glorify Him and bless others by living consistently with God’s laws. The Ten Commandments correct the notion that humanity is the center of the mental universe, the distance from which we measure God. This God-orientation, this orientation toward divine Love, has profound environmental implications.
