Whoever understands and obeys the will of God learns how to attain desirable ends by legitimate means. The way out of self-will and self-deception is through the gain of spiritual perception. Christian Science offers teachable individuals freedom from the claim of human self-will through the understanding of the one real and potent will, the will of God. The divine will finds expression in wisdom, intelligence, spiritual perfection, universal love.
Self-will is misleading. It perverts judgment and misdirects action. Some individuals are deceived into following a wrong course of action, believing it to be the right one. Others willfully pursue a wrong course. Broadly speaking, then, the phenomenon of self-will can be divided into two categories—the ignorant and the deliberate. Victims of the ignorant phase sometimes face physical suffering with what might be described as willful fortitude, enduring that which they believe to be inevitable under human codes. This condition is healed in Christian Science in proportion as the individual understands that God's will is always expressed in health and harmony, and applies the full measure of his understanding to the banishing of the unreal material belief.
Christ Jesus' compassionate healing ministry exemplified the will of God in action. Physical suffering, as well as sin, he referred to as Satan or evil, and destroyed both with the power of Christ, Truth. Understanding the divine will to be manifested in affluence, love, protection, life eternal, the Saviour fed the multitude in a desert, chose a home for his mother, restored to mental soundness a man obsessed with "an unclean spirit," opened the eyes of the blind, raised the so-called dead. Are we anxious, sorrowful, impoverished? The will of God is found in satisfaction, joy, abundance. Are we selfish, discouraged, envious? The will of God is revealed in unselfed love, vision, achievement. A passive attitude toward any form of evil constitutes disobedience to the divine will. Are we sick, frightened, fearing death? Obedience to the will of God brings health, serenity, everlasting life. Obedience to God's will entails active rejection of every belief in sin, disease, death, and all minor discords.
