WE are sometimes asked, "How is the world treating you?" Using human logic, we may be quick to conclude either that the world is treating us very well or else very badly. Such a question should prod us to reexamine our customary judgments about the world. The question should not cause us consternation but should motivate us to work for deeper spiritual insight into the source of the basic unity and security of our true being and consciousness.
Regardless of what the world seems to be doing, as Christians we are bound to understand how Christ Jesus reasoned about the world. He reasoned through spiritual sense. Mankind reason largely through material sense. Mortals put great store by worldliness, at the same time smarting under its domination.
Christ Jesus was free of dictation by material testimony. He could never have been afraid that turning away from matter would put his identity in jeopardy. He had a perfect sanctuary in his pure consciousness of spiritual verities. So he cautioned his followers (John 7:24), "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
Are we likely to think more about the world of people, places, and things than of spiritual verities? Then we may get so involved in adapting to these temporal phases that the world seems a colossus, prospering or obstructing at will our welfare, health, and even our ideals and character.
Christian Science instills in us the logic of the true idea of God, man, and the universe. The divine idea always turns us from matter to Spirit. Spirituality makes men give up idolatry, or their false love of what they believe the world is and can do, and so corrects temporal, disruptive experience.
In "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mrs. Eddy we read (p. 19): "Between the centripetal and centrifugal mental forces of material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we go out of materialism or sin, and choose our course and its results. Which, then, shall be our choice,—the sinful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving, and eternal?"
There is highly beneficial spiritual exercise in facing another's question of how the world is treating us. If we feel the world is treating us badly, we may become irked and sensitive. We may give in to self-pity and self-justification. If we feel the world is treating us well, we may be proud, arrogant, self-satisfied. These are all mental hurdles we must watch and gauge through increasing spiritual understanding.
In proportion as we watch in each situation for the opportunity to master these hurdles, we are able to prove that the material world is a false concept individually entertained and obeyed. Working at this spiritual conditioning and strengthening of thought, we develop the coordination and versatility of right judgment. Then we can make the final hurdle, the one combining all the tests of the others in the complete act of demonstrating that in God "we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
Mortals tend to make realities out of adverse circumstances and call them the world. They think of themselves and others as helpless victims of these circumstances. It is possible that when the people saw the man at the pool of Bethesda they considered him a helpless victim. And, according to his complaints to Jesus, the man himself felt this way. Had his own attitude and that of others healed him? No.
But when Jesus came, he spurned the circumstances, knowing no cause or reality apart from God. This judgment of the Christ uncovered the fearful errors in the man's thinking and enabled him to rise above enervating, mesmeric sympathy. He felt the freedom of pure, strengthening compassion. And the man was healed.
The beliefs of mortals in pyramiding unfavorable circumstances account for more than merely personal problems. They account for reactions of dismay and unrest in family, community, national, and international relationships, and among races. Beliefs of chance and superstition, deep-rooted in human consciousness, and fostered by material education and false theology, call up fear of widespread victimizing events. In Science and Health, our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, states (p.96), "The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears." A few lines farther on she adds, "Belief is changeable, but spiritual understanding is changeless."
Whatever the set of circumstances, our responsibility to mankind and to ourselves is found in the judgment of righteous prayer, as Jesus proved when he stilled the storm. Christ, Truth, knows no evil, because God did not create it, and evil therefore can have no victim. As each of us accepts his own sonship with God, which identifies him with complete dominion, the conviction grows that men today can feel the assurance of this comforting Christ-power. As Jesus said (John 16:33), "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
When we put to ourselves the question of how the world is treating us, we may be tempted to let our conclusions set off moods of irritation, self-condemnation, resentment, envy, or jealousy. At such times, if we are willing, Science guides us to a comprehension of the universe of Mind, in which man, governed by divine Principle, is incapable of sin, sickness, and death.
Instead of letting worldly beliefs treat us wrongfully, we learn that unpleasant human situations are the ways the carnal mind is trying to be something and do something, and we handle these beliefs. By denying the carnal mind and affirming the one Mind, God, we avert limitations, obstructions, and stoppages. We stop conforming to the speculative deflections of mortal mind and demonstrate the allness of divine Mind and its realities.
When human experience clamors for attention, whether impelled from within ourselves, through the thoughts and actions of others or because of circumstances, the mistaken conclusions, seen as the world, must be replaced with spiritual ideas. Jesus called this process the saving of the world. He said (John 12:47),"I came not to judge the world, but to save the world."
This saving of the world is its complete redemption—all error is destroyed, and eternal Truth is glorified in the overcoming. Our Leader calls us all to this result in these words in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 254): "Watch, pray, demonstrate. Released from materialism, you shall run and not be weary, walk and not faint."
