It is often said that we live in a permissive society, that is, a society in which people are relatively free to do what they want in personal life, the business world, or the world of art and drama, without fear of attracting much criticism or comment from others, or much attention from the law. The sort of permissiveness that claims that each one should be free to "do his thing," to indulge all his passing whims or lusts regardless of the consequences for others, is the bogus freedom offered by animal magnetism, the attracting power of evil.
The Christ, or spiritual idea of being, is the bringer of real freedom, wherein not self-indulgence but self-forgetfulness is the rule. In the genuine freedom that the Christ brings, each one is able to fulfill his greatest potential for good without cruelly trampling on the rights and freedoms of others.
Permissiveness, as an atmosphere of unrestrained self-indulgence, is in fact an aspect of despotism. Tyranny is usually thought of as a power exercised unscrupulously by a person or a group of people for maximum self-advantage. But mankind have been tyrannized much more pervasively by disease, poverty, age, by the total material environment. Christian Science explains that all tyranny, whether exercised by a political regime, a medical theory, the boss, time, a habit, or whatever, is at source the despotism of mortal mind, or materiality.
