AS A LITTLE GIRL, I displayed a dogged insistence on having my own way just often enough for family members to refer to me smilingly as "stubborn" Barbara. It was a label I found most unattractive. And while I managed to outgrow the childish behavior that earned me that label, shaking the suggestion that stubbornness was inherent in my nature was another matter. That has come through my study and practice of Christian Science.
Central to the teachings of Christian Science is the wonderful reality that God is the defining Principle of being. This means that the nature of God determines the nature of His creation. The distinguishing characteristics of divine Life, Truth, and Love alone are inherent in man, God's image and likeness—in the you that you really are, in the me I really am, in the real identity of every man, woman, and child.
God never made a stubborn person—or an impatient, dishonest, angry, impure, hateful, or stupid person. Even a tendency to define oneself or others by these characteristics is not inherent in anyone's real nature. Such negative traits are nothing more than counterfeits. Impatience is the counterfeit of patience, dishonesty the counterfeit of truthfulness, anger the counterfeit of forgiveness—and so on. Stubbornness is perhaps one of the most interesting, as it is the counterfeit of obedience. And obedience—a yielding of the human will to the will of God—is a condition of thought essential to divesting oneself of every other counterfeit quality.
