It is not merely material well-being that people need. What they desperately need is to know how to
live their lives—they need to know who they are, to what purpose they exist,
and how they should act towards one another; and, once they know the answers to
these questions they need to be helped to gradually apply these answers to
everyday behaviour. It is to the
solution of this basic problem of mankind that the greater part of all our
energy and resources should be directed….
… we know that the working of the material world is merely a
reflection of spiritual conditions and until the spiritual conditions can be
changed there can be no lasting change for the better in material affairs.
- The
Universal House of Justice (From a message dated 19 November 1974 to a National
Spiritual Assembly; compilation: ‘Social Action’, Prepared by the Research
Department of the Universal House of Justice, August 2020)
