In the winter of 1914 during World War I, a brief, remarkable truce was initiated by soldiers in the trenches. In the darkness of Christmas Eve someone raised a Christmas tree above the parapet. It was alight with candles. No one fired. Instead a single voice from the German lines began tentatively singing a Christmas carol. Then someone from the English side joined in. Soldiers on both sides managed a Latin chorus of "Adeste fideles."
When Christmas Day came, there were apparently many small incidents of gifts being exchanged by the troops along that portion of the front. There were soccer games and music and all sorts of unwanted fraternizing—unwanted by the generals. And the soldiers made mutual arrangements to bury their dead out there in no man's land between the two lines of trenches.
Someone said in a letter: "These incidents seem to suggest that educated men have no desire to kill one another; and that, were it not for aggressive national policies, or the fear of them by others, war between civilized peoples would seldom take place." The Boston Globe, February 25, 1988
Yet war does take place, and the fact that it does may tell us something about how habitual and extensive the human fear of "others" seems to be. Anyone who hasn't been assimilated into a setting of family and friends can seem a stranger, an alien—different, threatening. Don't we each have to admit we've felt at times that the mere fact of passing another being in the hall or on the street—someone who isn't us, living our life and thinking our particular thoughts— can seem threatening?
How quickly we draw the lines: different tribe, race, religion. Wrong, bad, dangerous! Or more immediately: from another part of the country, different educational and professional background. Unacceptable, unprofessional, uninformed!
But St. Paul in his letter to the Christians at Colossae talks about a "new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him," and then he refers to the fact that in Christ there is "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." Col. 3:10, 11
Where will the influx of Christian Scientists needed for the next century be coming from? From the same place the first one came from: people of other religions and no religion. They will come not because they are willing to cross over lines but because they feel no lines. They will feel themselves known more deeply and sincerely than ever before. There will be a feeling of belonging, not merely to an institution but to a common spiritual purpose and shared universal spiritual meaning.
In a Christmas letter to students, Mary Baker Eddy once asked, "What is it that lifts a system of religion to deserved fame?" She answered, "Nothing is worthy the name of religion save one lowly offering—love." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 258
What a revolutionary difference thought changed in this direction can make! The spirit of Christian Scientists, lifted up by radical spiritual discovery, was potently attractive in the earliest days of the movement. And wherever this same Christ-idea is foremost today, the Christian Science movement is growing again.
At the very first, of course, the only people to welcome were strangers. There was one Christian Scientist—Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. But she was certain of the universal nature of the truth she had discovered. She knew it was for not just a handful but for humanity. She saw, not in any personally triumphal way but in humbling terms, that as scientific Christianity freed thought enslaved by the bitter mistake of materialism, it would eventually become the religion of the whole planet. The Church of scientific Christianity would feel like home to humanity.
Mrs. Eddy's first student was someone of an entirely different class and background—a cobbler named Hiram Crafts. Then came other workers in the shoe-manufacturing trades, from Lynn, Massachusetts. People from a variety of denominations were attracted. Later there was an array of former clergymen who played key roles in the progress of the new Cause. Professional people, titled people, farmers, journalists, midwesterners and Europeans, all found Christian Science.
What pulled them all together? Wasn't it essentially that they were drawn to something with which they felt more at home than ever before in their lives? They were coming home; and they were being welcomed like brothers.
Where will the influx of
Christian Scientists needed
for the next century be
coming from? From the
same place the first one
came from: people of other
religions and no religion.
They will come not because
they are willing to cross
over lines but because they
feel no lines.
The reason for the phenomenon was central to the great spiritual discovery. Conflict, alienation, the separation of people, Christian Science shows, are the misguided, frightened dream of a mortal mind. But with the sheer reality of one divine Mind being demonstrated, the naturalness of unity begins to appear. At the same time the spiritually scientific fact produces the very opposite of naiveté. It brings more discernment and penetrates to the heart.
Faithfulness and honesty to the scientific, spiritual fact bring out and make possible the warmest and best of human experience. God's allness means man's oneness. Yet this is no mere metaphysical theorem; the words themselves can barely hint at the tangible richness of the reality to be found behind them.
What can happen when the deep mortal fear of the stranger is spiritually overcome? What can happen—and does—is more awesome than it was on the World War I front. The remarkable thing is that not only does spiritually based unity release good will, it begins to unlock the whole deep, true nature of man within us.
Not only are we more outwardly loving but we feel ourselves powerfully freed from self-conscious thinking and wondering what others will think. We are spontaneously responding to goodness itself, something much larger than ourselves, which is present for all. In fact, it's almost as though we were coming into the presence of new selves—selves that are shaped and related by the real presence of spiritual love rather than by any previous personal mortal history. And in this presence of Love, unity is the most natural thing in the world.
Isn't this experience in fact the coming of the Christ—the feeling we so often associate with Christmas but which is in actuality the Christ-spirit that unifies and releases at any time of the year?
When Christ Jesus got up to read in the synagogue, the Gospel of Luke tells us, he found the place in the scroll of the prophet Isaiah where it says: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he anointed me to tell the poor the good news. He sent me to announce . . . a season when the Lord welcomes people." Luke 4:16 (William F. Beck, The Four Translation New Testament, p. 167)
It is true that Jesus discerned the heart of those he met. Nothing was hidden to him. Yet he also knew the unlimited, eternally valued nature of each one's true selfhood as God's image. When someone expresses the Christ today, it still has this healing quality; this kind of thought is incredibly welcoming.
When we see that man in his true nature is not self-made but God-expressed, our own sense of self-righteousness and self-importance fades. It dawns on us that God alone makes—and makes known—His man. We find this man as we yield our conventional material sense of others and ourselves and are prepared to look for the image of divine Love. Having met the new, or spiritual, man even momentarily, we know we can recognize him everywhere.
Won't a Church that has at its heart and center this Christ-spirit inevitably and irresistibly grow? The crucial spiritual perception in the hearts of all will make the difference. It will in effect "stop the war" for whoever has heart to respond.
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