The book of Job has long caused thinkers to ponder the questions it touches upon concerning God and man. It remained for Christian Science, however, to furnish the key to its spiritual message and give the answer to the question of true being.
The book illustrates a great search for this answer. Job opposed bigotry with intelligence; he challenged dogma; he rightly sought to prove divine providence in human experience. By absolute fidelity to God he achieved solution to the age-old questions: Why do the righteous suffer? Where does evil come from, and who or what is responsible for it?
Job was tested, and was tempted to believe that his problems were real. But his stronger belief in the goodness of God enabled him to triumph. His sublime faith and his longing for a truer understanding of God caused him to withstand the testing and to overcome hate, resentment, and rebellion against God.
His chastening profited him, for it impelled him to examine his own consciousness fervently, fearlessly, and honestly. He listened justly to unmerited censure. When human decisions and evidences were against him, his moral courage empowered him to stand resolute.
Job's would-be comforters, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, tried to help him, but their standpoints were based on the belief that Job's troubles were real. Eliphaz sought to reveal God's greatness by belittling man, not seeing and knowing the man presented in the first chapter of Genesis, unfallen and pure. Bildad endeavored to establish God's justice by arguing that God was punishing Job for his sins. Zophar attempted to undermine Job's integrity by presenting man as mortal and God as unknowable.
The study of Christian Science reveals these three would-be comforters as old acquaintances: human belief, human remedy, human knowledge. They present the universal human claim that man is material and that evil is real. Such pseudo comforters fail in the hour of extremity. They represent futile consolation, for they lack Science. They cannot withstand the testing and purifying of human experience.
When Job differed, these friends denounced him. Yes, we all know them. They are the carnal suggestions which assert themselves in our problems and which we often admit as real. They are empty human dogma falling short in our need.
And how did Job react? Job was too truthful to admit the false charges. He knew he was obedient to God's commands, and he was honest enough to maintain his innocence, denying that he had so grievously sinned as to merit his almost overwhelming disaster. His whole desire was to know God, to understand Him. He exclaimed (Job 23:3, 5): "Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat! ... I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me."
Thus Job's consciousness began to change. His vision was enlarged, and he saw that the human mind was unable to comprehend the justice of divine law. But he clung insistently to the expectation of healing and redemption, denied human birth and death, and persistently trusted in God's love and saving grace. He said (Job 19: 25), "I know that my redeemer liveth." Subsequently he turned to God alone with such love and faith, such consecration and devoutness, such entireness, that his prayer was answered. He sought and found; he asked and received; he knocked, and it was opened. Through his steadfast adherence to God he had gained the assurance of the unreality of human suffering. Affirming with certainty the truth about God and standing steadfastly upon that right premise, he gained the peerless vision of divine glory. He saw the majesty and knowledge of God, His omnipotence and the magnitude of divine Truth.
Then came healing. Job was restored to health and vigor. Once more he had home, family, affection, but only after he had purified his faith and risen to a higher trust in God. Similarly in Christian Science our trials turn us more unreservedly to divine Love and test our understanding of the spiritual verities of being and our obedience to divine Principle.
There is an illustration, which we all know, of the steel cables used to uphold a bridge. Each huge cable is made up of a great number of steel wires banded together into the whole. Before being put into the cable, each wire is subjected to tremendous tests in order to determine its tensile strength; that is, how much pull it can stand without breaking. Another example is found in the refining of gold. The base metal goes through numerous processes in order to remove all impurities. All dross must be separated and discarded.
So in our experience in Christian Science our concept of life is tested and weighed, and as the truer concept survives, it increases in clearness, strength, purity, and enduring conviction. The spiritual idea of Truth is taking root and unfolds in our consciousness a higher sense of existence. No mental battle leaves us where it found us. Every true idea replaces some false human concept and helps to overcome false appetites, human will, and the desires and impulses of the personal, material sense of life. The inevitable and natural operation of the eternal law of Truth destroys the foes to peace and progress and brings to light the pure joys of spirituality.
In Christian Science we are all called upon to prove our understanding of the divine Principle, God, and our steadfastness thereto. Is there a weak place in our armor? Will our moral fiber stand testing? We may love, we may be truthful, we may be honest, we may be moral, but what per cent of actual spiritual tensile strength have our virtues? Jesus' spiritual strength, his love and understanding of divine Principle, carried him through crucifixion to resurrection and ascension. We learn through the great provable revelation of Mary Baker Eddy that we are under the same compulsion as was Jesus to refuse to admit the carnal mind as power in order that the divine depths of true being may be disclosed.
The belief that we are born in matter must be destroyed. As we see the nothingness of this error and respond to the truth of Truth, the false belief is eliminated and Christian Science is demonstrated. Truth does not ferment; error alone does the fermenting, and nothing but error is ever destroyed. Persistent and loyal obedience to Truth brings latent and dormant errors to the surface for their destruction and enables us to let go of them. With obedience come understanding and demonstration.
We do not have to make man perfect. But we do have to let the perfect idea of God's creating unfold in our consciousness. This is accomplished through quiet, silent yielding to the unlabored motion of the divine presence, thus proving, step by step, that evil is unreal, powerless, without beginning and without existence. Then will our thinking be detached from the limitations of the human mind and reflect the unlimited, ever-active qualities of God, divine Mind. This is being obedient to God, and to God alone.
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 542), "Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error." Our Leader shows us how to see through false beliefs to the law of divine Principle, which strengthens, clarifies, and illumines the way toward our spiritual destination. In "Miscellaneous Writings" she says (p. 278), "Those only who are tried in the furnace reflect the image of their Father." Genuine love of God abiding deep in the heart will withstand any earthly test. Fear of punishment fails, but love of God stands. Divine Mind revealing itself to human apprehension in true ideas is Truth unfolding the divine idea within us. Job said (Job 23:10), "But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold."
After saying that human hypotheses are antagonistic to the divine order, Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 79): "All these mortal beliefs will be purged and dissolved in the crucible of Truth, and the places once knowing them will know them no more forever, having been swept clean by the winds of history. The grand verities of Science will sift the chaff from the wheat, until it is clear to human comprehension that man was, and is, God's perfect likeness, that reflects all whereby we can know God."
