To someone who hasn't had the actual experience of living with Christianity on a daily basis, some of its goals and ideals might be considered rather impractical. On the one hand, most people could probably agree that it's relatively reasonable to want to get along with your neighbor—even perhaps to love your neighbor. But what about the Christian demand to love your enemies, or to do good to them that persecute you, or to bless them that curse you and hate you? Well, that's a different matter altogether, isn't it?
Many might feel that it doesn't make much sense to try to live the Christian's way; it's too easy to be taken advantage of. Look around you, they would argue; obviously there just isn't room for such an approach of unselfish love in today's hard-nosed, get-what-you-can-while-you-can society.
Or is there?
Christ Jesus had a lot to say about love and about appropriate relationships between people. He also had much to say about moral and spiritual values, and about things like what we really should be wanting out of life, what we should put our trust in, what we should worship. Jesus' teachings tell us that we can't really have any lasting happiness or satisfaction if we think we can serve God at the same time we're idolizing materialism. And one of his parables, for example, illustrates how the effort to build up bigger "barns" simply to store more of what we don't need or can't honestly use becomes an ultimately meaningless exercise. One's life, it seems, can be empty even while the barn is full.
The issue isn't so much a question of developing rational arguments that might somehow convince the world's skeptics as it is a genuine need of proving the validity of spirituality and Christian values for oneself.
Jesus also taught about things like the need for redemption and regeneration, about repenting and being born again, and about overcoming sin and healing sickness through prayer. Are these teachings—these Christian standards for living—merely platitudes and unrealistic fancy? Is all of this like the proverbial "head in the clouds" view of life? Or is it something much more solid, fundamental, practical, even scientific?
The issue isn't so much a question of developing rational arguments that might somehow convince the world's skeptics as it is a genuine need of proving the validity of spirituality and Christian values for oneself. Then, on the basis of a demonstrated Christianity, we can let the lessons of our own experience speak for themselves—speak to us and to the hearts of others. In some ways the issue of whether or not spirituality is reasonable and practical can never be satisfactorily resolved for the unbelieving, material mentality. Material-mindedness sets up its own strictures, which would generally tend to rule out ready access to the "things of Spirit."
So it takes a certain willingness to listen and see and observe with spiritual sense. But it can also be said that the reason for nurturing such a willingness—such humility really—is the most significant of all reasons. It is, as the Apostle Paul wrote, fundamentally an issue of life or death—an issue of real and abundant life in God or the emptiness and futility of mortality. Paul had written to his fellow Christians in Rome, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Rom. 8:6.
Paul's words, and his own experience, would seem a far cry from any sort of naive idealism or dreamy imaginings. He was following Jesus and dealing straight on with the immediate concerns and challenges of life. And what he himself was finding was a kind of peace and wholeness and satisfaction in life that could finally be had in no other way than through commitment to the spiritual rationale of Christ's Christianity.
Paul was discovering and showing others—showing those who were willing to listen, see, and observe with spiritual sense—that a life devoted to spirituality was truly powerful and wonderful. It was like that which Jesus had spoken of as the "pearl of great price." It was like what Paul himself had termed "the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Phil. 3:14.
Around the turn of this past century, a man who lived in Ohio began to discover for himself the very tangible and immediate practicality of spiritually based, scientific Christianity. The man had been sick almost constantly since his childhood and had been under the care of a medical specialist for two years when he first learned of Christian Science.
After visiting the home of some Christian Scientists, the man bought a copy of the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This is the Christian Science textbook, written by Mary Baker Eddy. It includes profound spiritual lessons that open up the deep meaning of the Bible. The book also contains discussions of the nature of God as infinite Spirit, all-power, the creator who governs His perfect spiritual creation in absolute order, harmony, peace, and joy. And the book makes plain that the real identity of each man and woman is in the spiritual reflection of the creator Himself, as God's own likeness, pure and holy.
The man continued to read Science and Health, to pray, and to study his Bible. As he did, a remarkable thing happened. His life literally began to change. He was thinking of himself and his goals in an entirely new way. He said then that his first thought was to help others. And he was healed.
He later explained, in his personal testimony of the healing, "The more good I saw accomplished, the more love I had for the truth. Christian Science changed my course from the first, and gave me a nobler aim and purpose in life." See Science and Health, pp. 672-673
In Mrs. Eddy's message to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1902, she points to St. Paul's New Testament confirmation of the absolutely vital importance of spiritual-mindedness. See Message to The Mother Church for 1902 6:25-28. And she also states: "The spiritually minded are inspired with tenderness, Truth, and Love .... We have no evidence of being Christian Scientists except we possess this inspiration, and its power to heal and to save." Ibid., p.8. Mrs. Eddy wasn't writing of some kind of futuristic rapture but of a spiritual-mindedness that actually achieves something significant in the here and now.
With one's head in the clouds, however, not only is that one left hanging in a kind of suspended animation but he or she doesn't really see anything of what needs to be seen. The things that cry out to be resolved and healed in human experience are left unresolved and unhealed, because the power that actually can accomplish the resolving and the healing has remained unrealized through the mental haze. But this is not anything like the scientific, real Christianity that Jesus practiced. His words and works were full of healing. Lives were made new and whole and truly fulfilled.
The Science of Christ today offers humanity the Master's original way of healing and unselfed love. The spiritual lessons certainly require a new, holy perspective, but the truth of Christian Science is brought home to us in the most practical and meaningful ways possible. Clearly there is, after all, room in today's world for a scientifically Christian approach to living.
