The announcement of the meeting at my local branch Church of Christ, Scientist, sent me once again to study Mary Baker Eddy’s definition of Church so that I’d be prepared to participate. I did not expect to find something that stirred my thought in such a needed way. Tucked in the second sentence of that definition, I found instructions that seemed to be just for me—an assignment I had not previously recognized (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583). That second sentence states: “The Church is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick.” Before, I’d been reading that as an expectation for the effects of Church on the peoples of the world, on all those “out there” who seem in need of uplift. This time I interpreted it as my dormant understanding that must be freed from false beliefs.
Now I can more quickly catch myself being impressed with error.
I wondered, Is “dormant” an accurate description of my thought? That was a shock! Am I mentally asleep? Am I apathetic, not dismissing material beliefs moment by moment? I felt a rebuke here, in a very good way. Here was a direct order for me to stand watch, to hold an alert, precise guard over my thinking; to let church give “proof of its utility” in me, in my individual life.
