Everything God made is perfect now, and His ideas, abiding in Him, dwell together in one majestic concord. Consequently there is, in reality, nothing in God and His creation that needs to be purged. Human consciousness, however, must be purified of its false beliefs that it may demonstrate this grand spiritual truth.
To purge means to cleanse or purify and in some instances to clear of guilt or moral defilement. In our day the word purge usually signifies the ridding of a party or nation of members considered dangerous—often by brutal means. Narrowed down, it could mean the ruthless elimination of one's personal enemies. A purge is often aimed at the truth for which individuals stand, as in the case when the Pharisees wished to kill Jesus to be rid of the Christ, Truth, which he so perfectly exemplified.
A natural reaction of most of us to a purge would be, "Certainly this is one form of evil that could never activate me." But let us examine in the light of Christian Science the insidious way in which the purge method is attempting to infiltrate human thinking today. For instance, to believe in the reality of evil is to subject oneself to its machinations. Thus the one who persecutes another is laying himself open to persecution. He who indulges in hate may find himself hated, and he who believes in ruthless purging is apt to be purged himself. This applies not only in political affairs but also at home, at church, or in business; in fact, wherever individuals resort to evil methods.
Mary Baker Eddy explains in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 401), "Any human error is its own enemy, and works against itself." Because evil carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction every endeavor to overthrow good results in the ultimate destruction of the evil purpose. While one false belief may appear to be handling many, what needs to be discerned is that the one perfect divine Mind alone is present, animating and governing all.
Our aim is to separate all error from our thought of man, to show him reverence and accord him his birthright of perfection. This is the only purge justified in the light of divine Science; namely, to purge one's own thought from every lying mesmeric belief regarding man, while acknowledging as real nothing unlike the Christ. Such a one warrants the reward whereof our Leader says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 204, 205): "Through the accession of spirituality, God, the divine Principle of Christian Science, literally governs the aims, ambition, and acts of the Scientist. The divine ruling gives prudence and energy; it banishes forever all envy, rivalry, evil thinking, evil speaking and acting; and mortal mind, thus purged, obtains peace and power outside of itself."
In a business organization mortal mind may point its finger at a fellow worker and say, "He has got to go." But to remove an individual does not bring spiritual progress or necessarily solve the problem. Why? Because evil is not a person, but a false belief to be seen as unreal. Nor does one necessarily heal the situation through resigning his position because a sense of injustice rankles, burdens falsely assumed seem unbearable, or error has urged a sense of inadequacy. The understanding of God's goodness routs the belief of injustice; reliance on God and acknowledgment of His presence bring freedom from false responsibility; and the discernment of one's unlimited sufficiency as the full representation of infinite Mind dispels the argument of inadequacy.
There are, of course, times when for his own good or that of an organization an individual should resign or be discharged. The fallacy which one should be alert to is the prevalent belief that anyone's well-being can be enhanced merely by the removal of someone else. On the contrary, progress is always commensurate with the lifting of thought above personal sense, its methods and aims. Indeed, one can safely trust his spiritualized thinking to be externalized in what is right by knowing that God's promise is not only for him but for all. Zephaniah, after condemning the treachery in the midst of Jerusalem, declared reassuringly (3:5), "The just Lord is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity: every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not."
Does one feel that he has been a victim of a purge; that he has been unjustly forced from his position or defrauded of some important assignment? He must deny this, not as an experience but as an aggressive mental suggestion attempting to draw his thought away from divine Love's perpetual control of its own. Actually Truth and Love alone are working, furnishing us with the spiritual lesson most essential to our progress. When animal magnetism believes it has purged one—removed or defrauded him—it is really being uncovered and destroyed itself. Despite appearances, one is not a victim but has the opportunity to refute animal magnetism's claim that there is power or reality in evil's purpose. We belong to God. Therefore evil can no more control us than it can control God. His law of the unfoldment of good still governs. It has not been and cannot be thwarted. There is comfort for us in the Psalmist's words (Ps. 75:6, 7): "Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another."
Man reflects the unlimited intelligence of infinite Mind. Therefore one is always greater than the problem before him, for inherent in man as God's infinite idea is the intelligence that solves the problem. Because one is an individual idea of God, no one can do his work, nor can one do another's work. When we understand this, evil cannot put us out of our right place, nor put us into a wrong one. Only divine Love can move us. Progress and purging will go on until our thought is exalted above the false testimony of evil to the certain recognition that as Mind's idea we are eternally in our right place.
Furthermore, the material belief of a purge in the home, church, or business has not remedied unhappiness. Why? Because it is fallacious to feel that harmony can be obtained solely through removing a person rather than through one's spiritual-mindedness. Again, to move oneself out because someone is dominating or unjust is often to accede to the suggestion to give error its own way. One must not purge or remove himself through an admission of his helplessness to master an inner conflict. He does not need to withdraw from certain situations or persons, but only from his own false sense of the situation and people involved. God is ever present; the one Mind is governing despite appearances, and he can know it.
There are times when it is right for one to change. A false sense of relationship or responsibility should not impel one's actions. But one should not first decide to go or stay and then work to have Principle support him in a humanly outlined plan. Nor should he permit fear, impatience, resentment, or human will to move him to a decision. Actually man is not faced with a decision, for he reflects the divine Mind, which knows all and therefore acts immediately and unerringly. Working thus and listening to no voice but God's, one will find intelligence and love alone moving him to necessary human decisions.
How wonderful to have learned in Christian Science that God, who creates all, also holds all His ideas in the right relationship to each other. One idea of God could not encroach upon, conflict with, or prevent the right unfoldment of another idea. Because every relationship stems from divine Love, it must be enlightening and liberating, never reactionary or restrictive. Thus what appear as discordant human relationships are not external but are erroneous thought conditions to be purged from within. The seeker after Truth knows that to become uplifted in thought is his real demonstration. Then ever-present good, which has seemed absent, becomes so real that he loses his sense of unhappiness. The burden lifts because his thought has been illumined or anointed with the Christ, Truth, and Isaiah's words are proved true (10:27), "And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing."
The spiritualization of one's thought is not complete until it is purged of every erroneous world belief. One should affirm with no mental reservation that he is a child of divine Love, that he is ever loved by his Father-Mother God, from whom he inherits all good. Joyously one can declare that as a spiritual idea, dwelling forever in God he is not subject to a past or a future, but only to God's law of good. Firmly one should own that he has no weaknesses, but that he is strong at every point, that he is God's infinite idea, unlimited in intelligence and ability, ever conscious of his radiant being as a complete representation of all-inclusive Mind.
One praying thus contemplates man's spiritual nature with the desire of becoming conscious of the completeness of his own true selfhood. Then he earnestly strives to live with his prayer. And in purging his consciousness of false worldly beliefs and opening it to the one infinite presence, he will find his body, his church, and his affairs being purged of all inharmony. Indeed, the Christ is here, illumining the consciousness of all men, purging thought of all evil, and glorifying God, good.
