IT HAD gotten to the point where I didn't even want to go to church. Faced with the challenge of a huge and nearly empty church building, our membership had grown increasingly contentious. We couldn't seem to agree about anything when it came to attracting more visitors to our services. Business meetings were unpleasant, and the friction had begun to spill over into church services as well. Sometimes, people got so upset that they stopped coming to church for weeks at a time. And that depleted attendance even more.
The climax came after an especially divisive membership meeting, when three members of the church's board of directors resigned their church membership. Now we had even fewer members! And rather than feeling uplifted by church, I just came away from it feeling depressed.
Around this time, I tore a ligament in my leg. My knee became so swollen and inflamed that I wasn't able to move. I found myself totally incapacitated, unable to get out of bed. I turned to prayer, as I usually do when something in my life needs healing, becoming more fully aware my oneness with God, with infinite Truth and Love.
Then I opened Science and Health and came upon Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual definition of Church, in which she described Church as "the structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." Science and Health, p. 583.
Suddenly I realized that with all of the things I was praying about in my life, I'd neglected to pray about the one thing that meant the most to me: my church.
I knew that my prayer had to be twofold. It wasn't enough to acknowledge God's power, the fact that He made and maintains every aspect of His creation, including the members of my church. I also needed to refute any suggestion that anything other than God could be in control, that our church community could be governed by anything other than God.
Mrs. Eddy called such suggestions the product of animal magnetism—the belief that evil is real and has power. I knew from experience that these suggestions usually present themselves to us as our own thinking. They speak our own language, justify the claims they make, engage and fascinate us with the subject so that we become totally absorbed by it.
I also knew the remedy for animal magnetism: the Christ, which is described in Science and Health as "the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness." Ibid., p. 332. I knew this message of the Christ could expose the suggestion that our church membership was quarrelsome, contentious, and divided as the lie that it was, and replace it with the spiritual facts of the situation. That as the offspring of the same God, the reflection of the same divine Mind, the expression of the same Love, we couldn't be anything but united. And this combination of exposing the lie about us and replacing it with truth would bring healing.
As I prayed in this way, I realized that I'd become totally mesmerized by all the suggestions presented to me about my church and its membership. I'd been duped into thinking that the church was run by persons and their own personal sense of things. That we were all helpless victims, trapped in an impossible situation. I'd accepted the idea that we were hopelessly divided without realizing that this was the very result that animal magnetism would aim for.
I asked God to help me change my outlook, to help me see what He was seeing. I asked the Christ to show me his church. I wanted to see the presence of Christ in each member and in myself.
I began by making a list for myself of all the Christlike qualities that each member of my church expressed. When fellow members called me to discuss various problems, I asked them to join me in the exercise.
Each time I heard a barrage of criticism or I found myself tempted to think critically about other members, I insisted on seeing them the way God sees them—like Him. Gentle, loving, selfless. I wouldn't allow anything about any of us as hard, critical, or self-willed to come into my consciousness. Whenever I thought about anyone in my church, I mentally lifted them in love to God, blessed them, and thanked God for them.
I also wrote down the qualities I wanted to see in our church community. Qualities like unconditional love, joy, gratitude, laughter, I rejected the idea that our church could be heavy, burdensome, critical, rigid, or closed to new ideas. I decided that I would be the change I wanted to see in my church community. I would start expressing those qualities myself. I would love every member unconditionally. I would listen to others when they called me, instead of talking about my own ideas—just love them and not be critical of them. Let go of what I thought was the right way to do things and be open to their suggestions.
I made a list of all the things I was grateful for about our church community. I couldn't believe how much poured out. Then, little by little, more members joined me in keeping a gratitude list and seeing the Christ in each other.
At some point during this process, I woke up one morning to find that all of the swelling in my knee had disappeared. The condition had been completely healed.
But more important is what's happened in our church community. Our formerly tiny group has mushroomed. Many newcomers have joined our church and many changes have taken place. Recently, at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting, one newcomer told us how much she loves the feeling of community in our church and how much she enjoys attending our services.
We all looked at each other and shared a knowing smile.
And I appreciated, once again, the lesson I'd learned—that conflict, divisiveness, opposition, are not a part of God and His creation. That the real opposition isn't someone whose viewpoint is different from your own. It's the belief that children of the same God could ever be in conflict with one another. And when the members of my church came together to combat that opponent, unity happened.
