Rivaling the alchemists' desire to find a way to turn base metals into gold has been amateur physicists' striving to create perpetual motion machines. Both goals may have been impelled by a force that would, if not misinterpreted, pull mankind's researches out of matter altogether.
True elements and real action are spiritual. It is the work of Christian Scientists to find spiritual qualities and laws that help lift us from the baseness and inertia of mortal mentality.
The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science states unequivocally, "If the Bible and Science and Health had the place in schools of learning that physiology occupies, they would revolutionize and reform the world, through the power of Christ." No and Yes, p. 11; Thousands of people all over the world feel this statement of Mrs. Eddy's to be true. The more one knows of Christian Science, the more he or she finds it to contain God's answers for all of humanity's problems. Frequently, however, one is humbled by an awareness of his own lack of learning in this Science and skilllessness in demonstrating it. Sometimes his struggles, and perhaps daydreaming goals, may make him seem as foolish as the alchemist or the would-be inventor of a perpetual motion machine.
Here is where church membership and church work can be so helpful and stabilizing for the Christian Scientist. Through working with others, sharing our experiences, we evaluate the worthwhileness of our goals, the workableness of our methods. Without the discipline of such a shared "laboratory," where patience, wisdom, and brotherly love are demonstrated, we are in danger of becoming only theoretical.
Working in The Mother Church and its branches gives us times for sharing our discoveries as well as opportunity for individual discovery in the Science of being. And our church provides avenues for meaningful use of this Science—first in our own lives, and then as far as our thought can reach.
Active work in the church organization brings to us things to pray about in a unique Christian setting. We may see a fellow church member struggling with a physical problem or an unwanted character trait. That has now come into our thought for us to shed on it the redeeming love of Christ. It is no happenstance that even the most humble of church committee work often is the place where redemption happens.
Such activities become our opportunity for proving what we are learning of Truth and Love and Principle. Sometimes while working on a committee with someone quite unlike ourselves, we learn more deeply the unifying power of Love.
And there are few religious experiences comparable to proving Christ Jesus' words, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Matt. 18:20; When gathering in his name embraces the gathering for committee work, the healing presence of the Christ is felt, and that committee work becomes world work.
When we find a clearly outlined action coming to a stalemated committee endeavor after we have joined in prayer, we apprehend more the currently available activity of Principle. Through such experiences we begin to understand what Mrs. Eddy discovered and stated in our textbook as the scientific, spiritual fact of Church: "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle,"Science and Health, p. 583; When we're active church members, we don't have to be told what that means. We're experiencing it.
We help each other's redemption along as we serve together. We're all working out our salvation. What we see, because of the intimacy and often guard down trust of fellow church workers, we have the ability to correct. Usually this is not done by personal comment, though there are those sacred moments when God uses us to open another's eyes. More often our help is given clinging steadfastly to an awareness of the Christliness of our being.
The more actively we are working out our own salvation, the greater help we are to each other. Our textbook, Science and Health, advises, "Know thyself,and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil" ibid., p. 571;
Of course, our victories over evil go far beyond committee work; our uplifted thought just naturally touches other areas of our lives. Too, we often get our start in larger world work by property caring for and loving our work in the smaller world of church activity. When we see our committee work as being, in a sense, a microcosmic action of scientific world work, we find an even greater incentive for shunning the amateurish and seeking to be truly, spiritually capable in our application of Christianly scientific laws.
Certainly as we advance from the small world to the larger, even to including the universe, we cannot waste our time in pursuit of foolish goals. We shun alchemy-like efforts of just trying to make good matter into better matter. We work toward dropping the world's false standards altogether, recognizing, "Base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen."I Cor. 1:28;
And, as wise "scientists," we refuse to try to turn our church organization into a perpetual motion machine that would run without any fresh spiritual input from us. We recognize the depth of our Leader's statement in Science and Health, "Mind is perpetual motion." Science and Health, p. 240. Ever willing to discover more of the substance and law of scientific being, we strive to make our movements obedient to our progressive understanding of Mind.
A longtime, dedicated church worker used to say, with a twinkle in her eye, "You'll be elected to church boards as long as you need it for your redemption." She would soften this blow to our pride with an account of her own experience. One time she was elected to a church board after having served previously; she felt she had progressed past that work — though do we ever? At that very first board meeting there was a confrontation with another board member that showed she really did need that work for her redemption.
This doesn't mean church workers actively engaged in branch church work are more in need of redemption than other members or that board work needs to involve confrontation of disagreement. But it may mean that those engaged in such service have accepted an opportunity for increased or enhanced spiritual growth.
When we approach our board, committee, and other work as dedicated Christian Scientists, determined not to use foolish means or only good human ways, but to make each activity an opportunity to learn and apply scientific laws, we're truly working in the spirit of God's Church. We're responding in an intelligent way to that redeeming force which brings everything to its original golden goodness and reveals the perpetual motion of Mind.
