Many Christians have echoed the poignant words of the Apostle Paul (Rom. 7:19), "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." Many also have wondered why their sincere efforts to work in God's vineyard have yielded such insignificant fruitage. Paul recognized the conflict between good and evil which appeared to be waged within him. He did not, however, leave any definite analysis of evil's perversive and illusive methods of operation and how to counteract them. It remained for Christian Science to do this.
The law of God was revealed to Mary Baker Eddy as omnipotent, ever present, and available to meet all human needs. From this basis she exposes with trenchant clearness the falsity of evil's claim to power and its pretensions to act as universal law; thus she lays bare its cunning propaganda of self-aggrandizement. In "Miscellaneous Writings" she speaks of three stages of thought through which we pass as we begin the mighty task of overcoming sin and turning from a false material sense of existence to the reality of life as spiritual and eternal, in and of God. She says (p. 107), "Three cardinal points must be gained before poor humanity is regenerated and Christian Science is demonstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance; (3) the understanding of good." These basic points are not learned one after another, like rules in arithmetic. On the contrary, they are gained through experience and spiritual growth.
In the experience that changed the course of his life, Saul accepted these cardinal points so essential to progress. A lesson startling in its suddenness and severity taught him the treachery of his human sense of right and wrong. From a mistaken sense of loyalty to the letter of the law he had been persecuting the followers of Jesus. When he was awakened by the Christ-voice, his repentance was deep and enduring. He must have seen his self-righteousness and rigidity of thought for what they really were, false states of the carnal mind which, as he later declared, is enmity against God.
When, through the ministrations of the disciple Ananias, Saul was comforted and healed, his acceptance of Christianity was instant and complete. The depth of his realization of the wrong he had done, his repentance thereof, and his acceptance of spiritual good are seen in the fervor with which he at once devoted himself to the service of the church he had so bitterly hated and indicate his worthiness of his new name of Paul.
Yet even for Paul, now the enthusiastic follower of Christ, the process of regeneration had still to go on. He was faced with fiery trials, tribulations, and imprisonments and confronted with situations where brute force, hatred, and hypocrisy appeared to outweigh right and justice. The temptation to believe in the power of evil must have been great, yet through it all he was endeavoring to realize the unreality and powerlessness of evil and to repent of even a momentary doubt or faltering trust.
From the wealth of his own experience Paul was able to point out to others the way of spiritual progress. After rebuking the church at Corinth in one letter, he wrote to them a second time saying (II Cor. 7:8-10): "Though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent. ... Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance. ... For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of."
Today the carnal mind still continues its machinations and would claim to counteract our efforts to prove man's natural attraction to good. When the more obvious breaches of the moral code no longer tempt us, we need more than ever to be awake to the more subtle suggestions of evil. The human sense of right and wrong is as unsafe a guide for us as it was for Saul, and reason divorced from spiritual understanding has signally failed to bring true advancement to mankind. Through prayer and patient waiting we must learn to let spiritual intuition reveal the divine plan to us and to depend habitually on His guidance. There is no other way of progress.
Whenever a problem remains unsolved or a healing is delayed, it may be that one needs to go back to the first cardinal point, the proper sense of sin, for hidden sin sometimes is the cause of failure to receive a healing. Of this first point our Leader says in the article from which we have already quoted (ibid., p. 108), "The first state, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the proper knowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evil seems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconception of what we need to know of evil,—or the conception of it at all as something real,—costs much."
To realize that evil is unreal, to awaken to the folly of giving it reality, power, and presence by playing its game or cringing before it in fear; to have the fervent desire to be free of it and to do the will of God, good—this is practical repentance. In meekness and with tears we may cry, as did the disciples when danger threatened, "Lord, save us: we perish" (Matt. 8:25).
Repentance involves humility. Only through consistent, self-effacing humility can we give up the belief that our own mere human efforts make us successful, that we are originators and creators, that we have a life of our own separate from God. There is need for a careful watch when some fault has been pointed out to us or some secret weakness uncovered, for at this point mortal mind would sometimes fill us with bitter remorse, a worthless substitute for true repentance. Remorse plunges its victim into an orgy of self-condemnation and despondency which saps resolve and acts as a smoke screen for continued self-indulgence, the very opposite of the quiet penitence which, acknowledging its fault, awaits only the opportunity to do better.
If we find ourselves dwelling on past problems, even those successfully solved; if we believe someone has wronged us but take credit for forgiving them; if in any experience we hold the evil to have been as real as the good, then clearly in these instances our work is incomplete. We have not reached the last cardinal point of progress, the understanding of good, for we gain this understanding only in the proportion that we realize the allness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.
Repeatedly our Leader explains how to make the distinction between the real and the unreal. All that presents itself to our thought needs to be challenged and the true and eternal separated from the fleeting and false. Human happenings, based as they are on a belief of life, intelligence, and substance in matter, appear to be a confused medley of good and bad; but when we understand that man and the universe are reflections of God, therefore spiritual, perfect, and eternal, we can see as unreal the evidence of iniquity, sickness, and woe, which never touch the true man made in His likeness.
The early morning mist may blot out most of the landscape, yet we know that the trees and hills are intact and unchanged by the vapor. Just so in our everyday life the right often seems to be overshadowed by the wrong, but when we learn to discount the evil as readily as we do the mists, we begin to realize that integrity, justice, love, and kindred qualities are unceasingly expressed by man, God-created and God-governed. The mists of error cannot continue to hide the oneness of God and man, divine Principle and idea, and the completeness of His creation from one whose vision of reality is daily becoming clearer through the study of Christian Science.
Deep and sincere love of God quickens our heart and opens our eyes. By constant watching and praying we shall gain more of the Christ-consciousness, which alone is able to detect the foe under every disguise. It is often our reluctance to become more spiritually-minded that makes the struggle to bring out more harmony in our life hard and long. Willingness to lay aside self-will and human planning and a sincere desire for spirituality help us to gain the proper sense of sin, to repent of the error in our own consciousness, and to attain an understanding of good, God, and our oneness therewith.
With repentance and a clearer understanding of man's true spiritual selfhood, we shall turn repeatedly from the stultifying belief of life as limited and mortal to identify ourselves as the man that God has created. With Paul we shall be able to say (Titus 3:5), "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost."
