MY FRIEND PETE and I sometimes go out for pancakes on Friday mornings. He had a career in law enforcement, and the other day he talked a little about when he was a police chief in a small town in Missouri. At one point he discovered a network of corruption in the municipal government—including embezzlement and misuse of public funds—that surprised him, as it included not just clerks who routinely handled money but also the highest elected officials in City Hall. Seeing the scope of criminal activity, Pete realized it was beyond his jurisdiction, and he turned the case over to federal authorities—but not before the mayor, sensing what was going on, fired him.

While justice was served eventually, in the short term Pete was out of a job. He found work after a time directing security for a large corporation in the private sector, but he missed the camaraderie and sense of public service associated with his earlier career.

Sometimes we may be tempted to think of corruption in local governments as taking place in some exotic locale like the tropics, or in developing countries, and not necessarily something that might be going on in our own backyard. But as a recent government salary scandal in the working-class town of Bell, California, indicated, allegations of corruption, sometimes on a surprisingly massive scale, may be found in all kinds of places.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find a need to clean up our governments. Nearly 3,000 years ago, Amos, the Biblical prophet of social justice, observed, perhaps with a touch of cynicism, “You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times, for the times are evil” (Amos 5:12, 13 , New International Version ©1984). Confronted with venality in the public sector, we might be tempted to “keep quiet” or give up. But Amos goes on in the next verse to point out that the remedy is to turn to God: “Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you …” (Amos 5:14).

Seeking God means prayerfully insisting that He is present and that only His actions, which are good, can be going on in the political arena. This is the Biblical platform for justice. It doesn’t just seek to avoid evil, but it destroys evil through the conviction that God, divine Love, permeates and fills all space. It’s not enough just to trust in a vague notion of the goodness of humankind, because it’s all too easy to have that trust betrayed. But by putting God first, we can avoid the pitfalls of human idealism and its converse, cynicism. Here, divine Love comes to the rescue.

Love, a Bible name for God, brings a sense of the allness and the immediate presence of God. Love is that which inspires us and cares for us. The human institution of government is designed to protect citizens, regulate certain activities, and inspire growth. These are actually Christly motives, born of the activity of divine Love in consciousness. We can support these activities and, through our prayers, protect their human expression in government from corruption and inefficiency. We can wrap government up in our consciousness by seeing it as an activity of divine Love. As we pray for our governments in this way, seeing them as expressing the caring nature of immediate and far-reaching divine Love, we will find transparency and integrity more clearly manifested.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, wrote in an article for a New York newspaper: “Divine Love reforms, regenerates, giving to human weakness strength, serving as admonition, instruction, and governing all that really is…. Love lived in a court or cot is God exemplified, governing governments, industries, human rights, liberty, life” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 287). This is seeking God as Amos advised, and as we follow this direction, his promise—that God will be with us—will be more clearly evidenced.

We can bring the lens of divine Love to our governments through our prayers. Seeing God as the source of true government celebrates the appearance of God’s qualities in public life, through greater transparency, efficiency, and justice. Grass-roots action can also be inspired, rescued from mere idealism to rest on the solid and scientific foundation of God’s government of the nations.