When Jesus ran the merchants and the money changers out of the temple, it must have been apparent to anybody watching that two radically opposed viewpoints were in conflict. "What sign shewest thou unto us," people asked indignantly, "seeing that thou doest these things?"john 2:18 What wasn't so readily apparent was the point of view that impelled Jesus' vigorous attack. Christian Science helps us gain the spiritual understanding of Jesus' point of view.
To the merchants, who were selling sacrificial animals, and to the money changers—not necessarily an unusually evil or profane lot—it must have seemed eminently sensible and reasonable to conduct their business in the outer precinct of the temple. They felt no conflict between religious and commercial activities. What was wrong with extracting the utmost usefulness out of the temple?
To Christ Jesus, cleaning out the temple was one of a long series of events that served to exemplify his mission of arousing mankind to understand the real nature of God. The Scriptures teach that God is infinite, perfect Spirit and man is His reflected image. Any human search for harmony, then, must of necessity involve an awakening of human consciousness to the nature and availability of God's infinite, harmonious ever-presence. Jesus' life proved that the only process of permanent value to a human being is the process of consciously striving to realize what God is: what He sees and knows. This awakening process reveals to us, as we work to discard the illusion that God's absolute perfection is not always and immediately at hand, the ever-expanding evidence of our own harmony and dominion as His unchangeable ideas.
