Power. Control. Influence. Whether on a global or personal scale, there is great interest today in gaining and wielding power, in getting others to do what we want them to do, in negotiating terms favorable to us, and in persuading others to see things our way. Books and training sessions on how to control people and situations abound, and psychologically manipulative approaches are touted as keys to success in personal relations, professional endeavors, and government.
The problem is that much disease-inducing mental turmoil can be traced to well-intentioned but overzealous, inappropriate, or unnecessary attempts to control people. Disease is often the product of frustrated—or successful—efforts to implement what personal predisposition has determined regarding how and when people should do things. Nearly a century ago Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of the Science of Mind-healing, described the pitfall of trying to control others: "Some people try to tend folks, as if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes us pay for tending the action that He adjusts." Further on, she admonishes, "The divine Principle carries on His harmony."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 353.
Christian Science attributes all power to God, the Supreme Being. It reveals God as All-in-all, the heavenly Father who possesses infallible control of every one of His spiritual offspring. From this standpoint, any presumption that one has power to exercise willful or despotic control over others breaks the first commandment and involves what Mrs. Eddy refers to as "the deification of self."Rudimental Divine Science, p. 17. We presume to set ourselves up as gods when we attempt personally to dominate others. But as we understand God's dominion, this takes away the urge to exert personal control, for the superiority of His ways and means becomes apparent. Study and practice of Christian Science bring out in us the native, Christlike qualities of pure, unselfed love that conquer the tendency to be domineering, dictatorial, manipulative.
