Much good is accomplished through the wise use of credit, borrowing, and lending. Some people, however, become so obsessed with wanting things that they incur debts on top of unpaid bills they already owe. It is obvious that they need more than just enough borrowed money to appease the creditors. They need wisdom.
A habit of being heavily in debt or of deficit spending cries out for gaining and demonstrating spiritual understanding. Mountains of debt may represent an accumulation of mistake and failure, a tendency to agree with falsity. But the sum total of debt in the world never ventures beyond the classification of correctable error, which Christian Science can reduce to proved nothingness.
Such bad habits and their penalties all stem from ignorance or doubt of God's ever-present abundance, from misapprehension of His allness and distrust of His irresistible power to express His mercy in effective ways on the human scene.
Spending that has moved recklessly toward compulsion is a corrosive disease demanding healing attention. Christian Science can provide this attention because it shows us how to change the direction of our lives by changing our thoughts. Being reborn—from materiality to spirituality— adjusts the balance of spending and saving by replenishing character with a grasp of enduring values.
Prayer forwards the new birth that brings deliverance. Instead of finding ourselves perpetually manacled with debt, we could spare ourselves increased entanglement with materiality if we would pray before we indulge. Further entanglement merely postpones the problem's solution. Prayer in Christian Science acknowledges the allness of God, all good. It repudiates whatever smacks of evil—including chronic belief in lack—as unreal, temporal, curable.
When we affirm the truth of God's supremacy, we can prove that He guides us unmistakably and refines us with His spiritual ideas. He gives us honesty with which to assess our status, conscience with which to reform it, intelligence with which to improve it; He gives us wisdom and spiritual strength. When we heed this wisdom, we know how to budget our income, to choose purchases carefully, to be content with what we can afford, to have the moral courage to say no to whatever we can't, and to exercise ingenuity in getting along without it.
Accepting the spiritual inspiration that arrests the development of a spending problem prepares us for a full restoration of integrity: determination to seek and to find practical means whereby debts can be cleared and expenditures kept reasonably current.
The Scriptures endorse facing the moral and spiritual demands upon us to gain dominion over indebtedness. Paul wrote: "Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due .... Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law."Rom. 13:7, 8;
Without question it is loving to pay people what we owe them. It is loving to cultivate thrift in order to be in the position to offer charity to those who temporarily need our aid. It is loving to be merciful with those who owe us and who are trying to pay. It is no less loving to be firm with those who owe us but seem indifferent to their moral responsibility to repay lawful obligations.
But it is most loving of all to be expectant of prompt vindication of the inherent right of each individual to prove his own worth as a child of God and hence to be free of debt. In the final analysis this debt of love that sees only the truth of perfect God and perfect man is all anyone starts out or ends up owing anyone else. Christian Science supports the present possibility of sound economic standing for everyone.
When confronted with a hungry multitude and only a few loaves and fishes obviously insufficient to feed them, Jesus did not declare the situation bankrupt. Was he, perhaps, more aware of the inexhaustible divine abundance than he was fearful of the numbers and figures, the statistical evidence of lack? Certainly it is not unreasonable to believe that Christ Jesus never reneged on payment of his primal debt to love, to think truthfully of, his fellowman—even at that moment when hunger and lack flaunted themselves as though they were true.
The Bible says that Jesus took what was there and gave thanks. Then from his Christly accounting of the completeness of man and all creation, which derives from the completeness of their creator, Jesus distributed more than enough food to satisfy four thousand men, not to mention women and children (see Matt. 15:32-38).
Another time Jesus and his disciples needed money to pay taxes. Did the Master scold his followers for their improvidence? Did he judge their lack as indicating failure in their work? Did he suggest that they change their line of work or move to more promising localities? No. He told Peter explicitly where to obtain the money (see Matt. 17:24-27).
Now the mouth of a fish is not normally considered a likely site for a bank. Looking there is not a conventional earning process or a very demanding one. Although Jesus' method dramatically bypassed popular beliefs of how to meet obligations, it worked.
Even so, we need always to look beyond the limited prospects of material sense and mortal mind. God's original blessing upon man includes promise of measureless dominion over all. The disciples were invoking this promise in healing, teaching, and preaching. They were employed in God's work, and so their remuneration came in ways that would probably be as puzzling to materialists today as they were then. In similar, often unexpected, ways provision can come to all those who serve God with total sincerity in their present calling.
Christian Science shows us that Jesus understood a method of supply and demand beyond the reckoning of human economy. He demonstrated a divine economy in which prosperity, abundance, and increase are native to everyone, accessible in the exact ratio to one's living of diligence, wisdom, and a maturing sense of love.
Jesus proved that a knowledge of heaven, where supply and demand are spiritual and always in perfect accord, takes practical form to meet human needs here and now. That knowledge of heaven, harmony, and of the eternal Christ, Truth, which Jesus demonstrated, is available today. To use heaven's treasures unstintingly is our debt to Jesus, for doing this speaks truthfully of his mission and therefore helps fulfill our responsibility to love him.
The perfect economy of abundant living is actually the only economy. From the scriptural premise of man created in God's likeness Christian Science reasons that the affluence of God necessitates the affluence of man. Whatever seems otherwise is but a false, material sense of things; this fades in the demonstration of spiritual reality, as Jesus proved.
Rightly viewed, through understanding man's perennial oneness with God's amplitude, resources can be seen as presently existing within one's true identity. Relying on these resources, he can instantaneously cancel his past shortcomings of realization. Divine substance, including all the right ideas that man reflects, forever exceeds the most stringent demands. Substance is infinite, incapable of depletion or deficiency. Neither matter nor mortal mind has access to substance. No intelligence exists with which to muster opposition to Science.
One could name many other substantial resources besides hope, faith, courage, persistence. In terms of spiritual assets, we're all multimillionaires. Still, none of us is rich enough to indulge the insatiable demands of dissatisfaction, doubt, discouragement, defeatism. When we admit these expensive guests, we deny substance and so deprive ourselves of each moment's completeness. Why not invite and cherish helpful qualities that will build up our spiritual stock?
Perhaps we could say that instead of struggling to get oneself out of debt, earnest application of Christian Science enables whoever practices it to give himself out of debt—that is, to welcome God's giving of all that He has, and to let that giving flow through his good works to bless all. Mrs. Eddy has shared with us an ever-fresh channel for receiving and giving. She writes: "May God give unto us all that loving sense of gratitude which delights in the opportunity to cancel accounts."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 131;
Certain it is that no one can lack gratitude when God unfailingly supplies it. It follows that we can never be without the means to make our gratitude known for service rendered, possessions purchased, and commodities consumed. Thus we can advance brotherly love impartially to all, as Jesus did. Then, best of all, we will discover our own and others' true natures as children of God, Love's royal heirs. We will find ourselves directly receiving abundant grace and meeting the terms that fulfill the equation in the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."Matt. 6:11, 12.
