Some years ago I lived in a Muslim country. My little bungalow was situated on a beach next to a poor section of the city. I had many friends there, one of them being the local imam—the leader of the prayers in the mosque. Occasionally I would talk to this lovely gentleman about his religion to try to get a better understanding of it.
One day I decided that I would ask him how Islam defined God. I was certain that as a Christian Scientist I had the best definition—as if the definition of God were something one could possess rather than live by! As I strode across the beach to his very modest home, my state of thought must have been very close to that of the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in the temple. See Luke 18:9-14
After the customary greetings, I asked my question. The reply he gave me became one of the great lessons of my life. "If you took all the branches of all the trees in the world as pens," he replied, using an image from the Koran, "and the water of all the lakes, rivers, streams, fountains, and oceans in the world as ink, you could not write out all the names, all the qualities, of God." In the moment of stunned silence that followed, he added, "You know, you are a better Muslim than most of the Muslims surrounding me." I took this to mean that my life style followed a pattern he approved of.
During class instruction in Christian Science our teacher quoted a verse by the American poet Edwin Markham. It runs:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in! "Outwitted."
That's exactly how my friend had acted toward me—he had gently pulled down the wall of my self-righteousness with the love that always includes.
What one might call a "we and they" attitude seems to be one of the universal characteristics of the human race. Paradoxically, this sense often seems most pronounced in the religious sphere despite the prayer of our Master, Christ Jesus, for his followers that "they all may be one." John 17:21
It is so easy to let oneself be tricked into drawing lines of division based on class, race, physical appearance, culture, manners, language, accent, political or religious affiliation, mannerisms, wealth, sex, opinions, and beliefs of all sorts. Yet in so doing we go against this injunction written by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy: "I recommend that Scientists draw no lines whatever between one person and another, but think, speak, teach, and write the truth of Christian Science without reference to right or wrong personality in this field of labor." No and Yes, p. 7
Drawing lines—the "we and they" attitude is a temptation that comes to most of us from time to time. This tendency is especially malicious in the religious and metaphysical arena. When we see others as "not having" the truth or as being less than we are or as not capable of having our present understanding of truth—whatever that may be—we have introduced dualism and division into our experience. And students of Christian Science could do more to avoid this trap. How often we hear expressions like "He is not a Christian Scientist, but . . ." and "Although he is not a Christian Scientist . . ." and many others that describe a world supposedly divided into two camps, Christian Scientists and "the others"!
I was startled one day when someone I admired told me, "God has never heard of the words Christian Science." Certainly God knows His own law, which governs His spiritual creation, and Christian Science is the revelation of this law. But my friend's statement made me realize how easy it is to get caught up with words rather than with the substance behind them. In human language, words, expressions, and concepts are like signposts pointing toward a certain reality—they are never the reality itself. It's possible that one could learn the Scriptures by heart and still not manifest much that could be considered true spirituality.
Christian Science upholds with a unique firmness and clarity the spiritual unity not only of all people in God but of the whole universe as His divine manifestation. "God is His own infinite Mind, and expresses all," Science and Health, p. 310 writes Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. So if God has never heard the words Christian Science, He hasn't heard of a special group called "Christian Scientists"! He can know only His own spiritual ideas, which we call His children. These do not have any labels inherited from human history or imposed by sociological criteria. And when we carefully study the half dozen or so definitions Mrs. Eddy gives of a "Christian Scientist," we will be much warier of bandying the label about rather thoughtlessly as just one more religious identification tab.
She writes for instance that a real Christian Scientist is one who possesses the inspiration of Jesus and its power to heal and save, one who adheres to the rule of Principle as directly as to the law of mathematics. She writes that a true Christian Scientist is one who leaves all for Christ. And wouldn't this include striving to give up all human opinions and judgment, all fear, resentment, pettiness, personal criticism, every ounce of sensuality and apathy, all resignation and discouragement—in other words all limiting characteristics?
Yet once we understand the Christian Science movement to be a movement of thought, as our Leader speaks of it, rather than a purely human organization, it is so much easier to free ourselves of this petty dualism of labels. We are no longer classifying persons or mortals but rather discriminating between different kinds of thinking. We suddenly realize that what we've come to think of as representing "non-Christian Scientists" may have more to do with our own concepts than with people "out there." Perhaps it's the "non-Scientist" in us that we should be concerned with—whatever in thought still calls out for redemption.
The heart and soul of this movement of thought is a clearer understanding of divine Love, the great remover of all human labels, including those that define people as sick, sinful, dishonest, drug-addicted, immoral, and the like. Love enables us to see beyond all labels to the perfect spiritual essence that constitutes the true identity of everyone.
A student of Christian Science working in a tropical country proved this. He was coeditor of a magazine that dealt with social and developmental issues in an area where, because of widespread unemployment, prostitution was a major problem. In the course of his work he had to undertake a survey of prostitution in various countries. During this research he found himself on the Saturday before Easter in a large port city. His assignment was to interview prostitutes in a very dubious hotel, the bar of which was one of their favorite haunts.
One who has truly accepted the exhilarating
liberty of being a child of God experiences daily
the spiritual fact that divine Love never excludes
but always includes.
Having never undertaken such an assignment in his life, he felt somewhat nervous about it. So before going to the bar, he spent a full hour at prayer in his room, simply establishing in his thought a clear understanding that in the kingdom of God there are no ideas wearing the label "prostitutes." And as he prayed, he also felt that he could follow Christ Jesus' example in being sensitive to any human need for healing that might be expressed in the course of the evening.
On entering the smoke-filled bar, his eyes immediately fell on a young woman from whom he felt a mental call for help. He sat at the table next to hers and started praying. A few moments later, a young prostitute came to his table. She happened to be a friend of the one he had noticed upon entering the bar, and she called to her friend to join them. After they had discussed their work with the man, the conversation moved effortlessly and quite naturally to the topic of Christian Science. After a short while, the two young women expressed such interest that he returned to his hotel to get some Christian Science literature for them.
The next day, Easter, the three of them met again. And on Monday evening, after a full day of interviews in various bars in the city, the man saw his new friend, who wanted him to continue telling her about God and His divine laws and about man's relationship to God. This time three other young prostitutes joined them, and what followed was the most extraordinary experience of sharing Christian Science the man had ever had. At one point a fifth, very provocatively dressed woman entered the room, suggesting that the other women come with her to a certain nightclub. Her suggestion was rejected by one of those present, who replied, "Leave us alone. We are in heaven."
When the man, who lived thousands of miles away, left the country after his brief four-day stay, he continued to communicate with his friend. He would periodically send her cassette tapes in which he shared further spiritual truths. Although some years later, and after a second encounter, he lost contact with her when she moved to another country, he felt that none of the truths that had been shared could ever be lost. And above all, he learned the lesson that no labels in the world can resist divine Love, which had constantly been at the helm of his thought, banishing all suggestions of sensuality and especially any feelings of being judgmental.
The greatest winners in this process of "unlabeling" can only be us. Life lived in a mental cubicle with a rather large stack of labels is ultimately a rather sad and limited affair. Even if one occasionally darts out, one may all too quickly rush back with a sigh of relief that "I am not as other men." Luke 18:11
Above all, this attitude of "we and they" is a way of keeping oneself from others, often out of a fear of having to change, reconsider, broaden one's outlook. More expansive attitudes can initially be painful to a thought that has allowed itself to crystallize into self-satisfaction, religious ritualism in all its forms, or the limited comfort of mental seclusion. Yet one who has truly accepted the exhilarating liberty of being a child of God experiences daily the spiritual fact that divine Love never excludes but always includes. And the walls that we need to pull down are never elsewhere than in material belief, alias mortal mind, which is not our thought at all. It is simply a mental imposition that would vainly attempt to trick us. Vainly, because, as Science and Health explains, "Error is a coward before Truth." Science and Health, p. 368
It is Truth that destroys walls, not our human efforts. And as we yield to the stunning and empowering fact that "we have the mind of Christ" I Cor. 2:16 —our one and only true Mind—we realize the walls were never there except in a supposed mortal dream. We discover what an incredible privilege it is to go through life including and embracing all, rather than excluding and labeling. We discover, in the glorious words of the Apostle Paul, that "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." I Cor. 3:22, 23
I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep,
and am known of mine. . . .
And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold:
them also I must bring
and they shall hear my voice;
and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
John 10:14, 16
