Over the past few years it’s been encouraging to follow reports, particularly in The Christian Science Monitor, that show world governments taking a stand for honest innovation. For example, at the G20 summit in Turkey in November 2015, “The leaders of the G20 nations—including from major cyber powers such as Russia, China, and the US but also from Brazil, India, and Indonesia—approved this latest UN GGE [Group of Governmental Experts] report [on cyberspace norms] and called out several specific norms, including most surprisingly the prohibition on commercial espionage.” This summit, along with other international agreements and actions, has contributed to a modest but significant decline in “commercially motivated cyber espionage” between nations (see “What it’ll take to forge peace in cyberspace,” csmonitor.com, March 20, 2017).
This is good progress. I would even see it as evidence of the influence of the universal Principle or Truth we call God, moving individuals and nations to a greater expression of goodness, honor, and integrity. While there are complex challenges yet to be overcome in this arena, further reform and victory can be expected because the law of God, good, is operating in human consciousness, awakening mankind morally and spiritually, which naturally results in improved ethics and more honest actions. Creative integrity reflects the nature of divine Principle, Love, and clearer views of Principle will result in a strengthening of honesty, unselfishness, and moral courage.
Whether individually or as a nation, we never need to feel driven to plagiarize or steal ideas, because we’re each fully endowed with all the God-given capacities we need to make an honest, valuable, and unique contribution to the world. As children of God, we don’t exist to take from each other, but to genuinely give expression to the rich qualities and capabilities replenished in us each moment by our divine source. I think the spirit of this is brilliantly conveyed in a Scripture about the building of a temple dedicated to God’s holy name. It says: “Lord our God, all this abundance … comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent” (I Chronicles 29:16, 17, New International Version).
