A young husband came to a Christian Science practitioner asking for prayerful help with his marriage. Several months earlier, he and his wife had had a big blowup. Tempers were lost and unkind things were said. Although the couple had "kissed and made up," the incident left underlying hurt feelings. Both partners felt a division between them that didn't seem to be healing.
The husband explained to the practitioner that he was earnestly trying to heal the situation through Christian Science. (As was his wife.) Yet he still felt estranged. When asked how he had been working metaphysically, the husband answered that he had been striving to see and love the perfect man of God's creating.
"That's essential," the practitioner replied, "but are you realizing that she is, in fact, that perfect man? And are you acting as if you believed it?" The practitioner then pointed out this passage from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy: "John saw the human and divine coincidence, shown in the man Jesus, as divinity embracing humanity in Life and its demonstration,— reducing to human perception and understanding the Life which is God." Science and Health, p. 561.
In our metaphysical treatment for ourselves or others, we might well ask, "Am I seeing that there are not two realities, but only one—and that this one is not theoretical or abstract but realized in our present demonstration of Life and Love?" If so, we will see and feel—spiritually sense—the coincidence between God's man and the one we are praying for. And we will strive to think and act accordingly, with all our hearts.
The vital element in healing is love. It's the degree of our Christly affection and compassion that enables us to see others as they really are. Without this genuine love and affection, our eyes are blind to spiritual reality, however much of the letter of Science we may know. To heal we must love humanity with Christly ardor, embracing our fellow man and woman "in Life and its demonstration."
This is what the husband saw he had to do. He realized he'd been thinking he could "love" some abstract mental ideal, as if his wife were not in reality God's very expression. No wonder his prayers were having so little effect! And no wonder his wife had felt so little healing love. The husband had deluded himself into believing that he could hold hidden resentments and be unaffectionate to his wife, while at the same time "loving her real selfhood." What a joke! His very actions proved he wasn't seeing the real man.
Happily, the husband learned that divine Love must be demonstrated in living Love—in kindness, patience, humility, in genuine appreciation and support of the good in another, in healing. Through self-surrender, subduing of pride, and enriched affections the spiritual idea of marriage as the union of spiritual qualities was better apprehended, and the division between husband and wife was soon healed.
Isn't the task of every Christian metaphysician, or healer, to embrace humanity in the true idea of Love, thereby making evident the human and divine coincidence? The textbook also tells us, "The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus." Ibid., p. 25. As his latter-day disciples, can we do less than strive to make our lives living testimonies to the character of God? The way to make the divine idea evident in our humanity is to love as Christ Jesus loved, to back our profession of Christian Science with our hearts and our lives.
Love, after all, is the meaning of Life. Is there a better reason to live than to love and be loved? Nothing makes sense or is eternal but that which expresses Love. No wonder John urges, "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." I John 3:18. Through Love demonstrated "in deed and in truth" we come to know oneness with the Father, conscious Life itself. And nothing less is eternal heaven.
What separates the theorist from the true Christian Scientist, then, is his life and character. It's our deepening humanity, affection, kindness, patience, honesty, that prove we are actually gaining the consciousness of spiritual reality. Virtually anyone can give intellectual assent to the concepts of Christian Science and become proficient, even brilliant, in their statement. But only those striving to be Christian, in the fullest sense of that word, can truly see reality and demonstrate it with ever-increasing assurance and power. Christ's way is plain for all to see. The Sermon on the Mount epitomizes the demands of Love and of living Love in the here and now of daily life.
Of course, many sincerely desire to obey Christ, Truth, but wonder how they can possibly obey such challenging commands of the Master as "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Matt. 5:44. How can we love an enemy? Or one who is apparently hating us? Or one who has wronged us? And looking at the world, we might ask, "Does 'divinity embracing humanity' mean we must actually love the murderer, the rapist—the brutal and depraved specimens of humanity that haunt the world today?"
Christian love should be imbued with the scientific certainty that the coincidence of the human and divine is not the coincidence of good and evil, of Spirit and matter. Divinity embracing humanity is not Truth embracing error! These opposites can never touch or coincide. Only to mortal sense do the real and unreal seem to mix and coexist. But evil is never man! The love that is Christianly scientific breaks the dualistic illusion of "good and evil" man. It separates the real from the unreal, showing the good to be divine and the evil to be delusion— neither person, place, nor thing. In this way, evil is scientifically destroyed— depersonalized—and the human being is embraced in healing truth.
Yet this scientific answer, "We don't love the sinner or sin. We love the real, spiritual man," can be given rather patly and with little sense of the deeper demands of Love. Our love is genuinely scientific and Christian only to the extent we discern that there aren't two kinds of man. As the husband mentioned earlier had begun to learn, there is in fact only one man, God's man. Thus our radical affirmation that good and evil do not coexist in man does not cancel but actually heightens our ability and responsibility to love our neighbor with a deep and heartfelt Christian affection.
So the answer to "Do we love the seeming sinner?" is a Christian "yes" as much as a scientific "no." Through the grace of God we must literally love—and strive to love—those that seem to be our enemies. And wherever humanly possible, do good and be kind to those that hate us or treat us badly. How else will divinity be seen embracing humanity "in Life and its demonstration"? How else, except by striving to love, will we have the spiritual breakthrough that enables us to see God's idea?
Of course, we must use wisdom; the Master warns against throwing pearls before the swinish thought that turns and rends. See Matt. 7:6 . And as much as Jesus loved others, he often hid himself from the carnal mind's hatred and observation. Yet couldn't our professed love of the real man be evidenced much more often in genuine expressions of love and kindness to those around us who might not seem to deserve it?
No one says this is easy. It takes great humility to give unselfed love—to set aside animosity, fear, hurt feelings, and wounded pride. But isn't this manifestation of divine Love the awesome, overmastering love of Christ? Isn't it the forgiving love Jesus expressed even to his crucifiers? Isn't it the sublime love that Jesus demonstrated in Gethsemane, when "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood" Luke 22:44. as he struggled to do God's will and remain love? The textbook gives the spiritual interpretation of "Gethsemane" as "patient woe; the human yielding to the divine; love meeting no response, but still remaining love." Science and Health, p. 586.
To love one who has hurt us, to show affection to one who may throw it back in our face or betray it, may indeed be a Gethsemane. Our experience with friend or spouse, children or church members, may well include "patient woe." But in the crucible of "love ... remaining love," the human yields to the divine, transforming our nature and bringing spiritual progress beyond human comprehension. Unselfed love and affection is Christ's way, and it must be ours, if we follow him and drink of his cup.
And what joy and benedictions we receive of the Father when we do steadfastly love, holding to the spiritual idea of man, of marriage, of church—of whatever is spiritually real—right in the face of hatred! We know the joy of Christ, the joy of the obedient Son, the joy of feeling embraced in the divine Love that empowers us to remain love, even when our love meets no human response.
In the "Scientific Translation of Mortal Mind" the textbook lists these moral qualities: "Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance." Ibid., p. 115. If the Christ's divinity is made manifest in humanity, as the textbook states, won't it also be manifest in each of these other qualities as well?
Let's have the divinity of the Christ be manifest in our honesty, our affection, our compassion, our hope, faith, meekness, and temperance. These Christian qualities are the gateway to heaven, to the consciousness of reality. They precede and prepare the way for genuine spirituality. Their appearance assures us we are awakening to our heritage as the sons and daughters of God.
