"I don't wish to go to heaven if there is a single person left in hell," I used to say when I was an adolescent and rebelled against the traditional concept of eternal damnation. The fundamental contradiction between the concept of a God of love and the cruel thought of eternal damnation was one of the things causing me such deep dissatisfaction with my childhood church that I finally left it. I specifically remember how I had been struck by Christ Jesus' amazing command—at least it appeared amazing, almost incomprehensible, to me then—"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5:48.
Many years later, when I found Christian Science, I was excited to learn of a teaching which, like Jesus, "taught ... as one having authority, and not as the scribes," Matt. 7:29. and which also took seriously Jesus' command to be perfect. Yet many years of additional study were needed for me to become aware of the fact that this perfection:
• Is a present state.
