WHEN CHALLENGES IN LIFE SEEM OVERWHELMING, it's encouraging to know that there is a spiritual standard that provides a healing solution to any difficulty. The Scriptures promise us, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him" (Isa. 59:19).
The divine standard is based on the spiritual relationship we have to God as His immortal idea, created in His image. Christian Science affirms that God is omniactive, omnipresent, and omnipotent good without a vestige of evil. This infinite good is also divine Mind, the self-existent and eternal Life that has no starting point and no end. The intelligence of this one perfect Mind is expressed as true individual consciousness—as the unique and perpetual identity of each one of us.
Admittedly, one's spiritual selfhood contrasts with the finite, material definition of life that appears to be an amalgamation of good and evil, bracketed by a beginning called birth and an ending called death. Mary Baker Eddy explained this apparent dualism of opposing forces in Science and Health when she wrote: "The continual contemplation of existence as material and corporeal—as beginning and ending, and with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages—hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust" (p. 550).
Through the study and practice of Christian Science, we come to understand that corporeal personality is the source of all human difficulties. This false identity, which is the seedbed of disease, sin, and discord, is not the standard to measure our real character. By identifying oneself in God's likeness, false traits of character are uncovered and destroyed, and spiritual regeneration takes place in the form of healing and salvation.
After he cured a crippled man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus told him, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" (John 5:14). Was not this a reminder of how important it is that we live by the spiritual standard of Godlike thinking and conduct? Jesus' understanding of the inseverable relationship of God to His creation brought to light this man's true, spiritual wholeness as a child of God forever untouched by sin, disease, or carnal-mindedness. This truth of spiritual being is what reformed and healed the man.
The healing power expressed in what Jesus knew and did was the Christ, Truth. This eternal Truth is present and active today in Christian Science healing. In Christian Science, the purpose of prayer isn't just to produce a better physical body (although that happy result is the derivative effect of the mission of this Science). Metaphysical healing always calls for a greater degree of spirituality in individual consciousness, expressed in more patience, purity, integrity, and love.
Mrs. Eddy warned: "Moral ignorance or sin affects your demonstration, and hinders its approach to the standard in Christian Science" (Science and Health, p. 483). Sinful errors, motivated by fear, sensualism, human will, resentment, or by stubborn resistance to adhering to the spiritual standard, may need to be addressed and overcome. So, instead of praying to change human circumstances, the focus of prayer is to bring human thinking and living into harmony with God, good. It's uncorrected negative material-mindedness and self-centered emotionalism that would defile individual consciousness, undermine health, and thwart success. Self-centeredness may be described as a fixation with the material sense of self (our own or another's). It takes heartfelt honesty and humility to discern, challenge, and destroy the devastating effect of material-mindedness on our lives.
When we understand that the only Ego is divine Mind and that this Mind is the only source of all the right thoughts we express, erroneous mental states can be impersonalized (deprived of any selfhood) and thereby forsaken. Sinful conduct then dissipates into nothingness. Such spiritual cleansing of consciousness enables us to know that right when and right where some sinful impulse appears to be at work in us, the existent spiritual quality of God that sin claims to negate is actually present within our consciousness—within our capacity to know and express right now.
The truth of our Godlike being, understood and demonstrated, impels us to identify only with the nature of God, good—with His harmony, purity, health—and to abandon whatever does not.
It takes heartfelt honesty and humility to discern, challenge, and destroy the devastating effect of material-mindedness on our lives.
The same spiritual standard that applies to the healing of sin and disease also applies to resolving human strife. Instead of accepting as valid and unalterable the appearance of many mortal personalities with differing minds fueling conflict, resentment, and hatred, spiritual understanding can bring about a totally different picture. Christian Science demonstrates that the one infinite All-Mind is expressed, not through many disparate minds, but in the infinite variation of Mind's own harmonious ideas.
The presence and authority of one universal Mind empowers us to nullify the divisive effects of personal conflict or misunderstanding in our home, our church, or our world. If mistakes have been made, our spiritual understanding awakens us to recognize a mistake as a mistake and to take the necessary God-directed steps to correct it.
If one's church appears to be floundering and the membership diminishing, God's spiritual standard can be utilized. As this standard is acknowledged and adhered to, members will be guided increasingly in the direction that is obedient to the leadings of divine Mind. As this is done, the spiritually receptive will be attracted to the doors of this church.
Individually we can pray for Church to fulfill its mission to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17). Every church member has the opportunity and obligation to contribute to this healing thrust. We do this not only through our individual healing work, but also through our correct explanation to others of how divine metaphysics is applied to the needs of humanity.
If life appears to be barren and unfruitful and healings prolonged, might not this be a signal that our spiritual sensibilities need to be sharpened by adhering more closely to the spiritual standard that heals? In other words, each of us always can more effectively identify with the one immortal divine Mind as its spiritual idea, and not with a finite mentality, separate and contrary to God.
Although it may be a struggle at times to maintain the spiritual standard, we all can strive to be more obedient to God's law of healing. Christian Science healing evidences that we understand, and are demonstrating by degrees, the fact that the needed spirituality of consciousness, which may at first seem to be lacking or illusive or even nonexistent or unattainable, is actually ours now as God's reflection. The core of every human difficulty is the material-mindedness that is objectified as a discordant set of circumstances. The antidote is the necessary spiritual-mindedness that is objectified as the healing solution.
Christian Scientists who are faithful to real being and unyielding as witnesses to the truth not only are enriching themselves individually but are contributing to their church's effectiveness in uplifting the race spiritually. In this way, the Scientist is helping to maintain the spiritual standard that is capable of promoting the unity within the church that is based upon divine Principle. One's sense of conscience is enlivened when one adheres to divine Principle.
Our joy and spiritual effectiveness cannot be sabotaged when we identify with the truth of being. In this way, we utilize the spiritual standard that heals and blesses all.
