Vehemence has been known to accomplish much good in supporting a high human sense of truth. "Truth is on the march and nothing can stop it" "J'accuse," L 'Aurore, January 13, 1898; was the vehement stand taken by Emile Zola in defense of the accused Army officer Dreyfus in France in 1898. Thought was so stirred generally that not only was Dreyfus restored to freedom and eventually vindicated but a number of evils current in officialdom at the time were corrected.
So, too, your vehemence and mine in behalf of the spiritual facts of immortal Truth in Christian Science can stir mankind to demonstrate more fully the harmonies that immortal Truth brings forth.
A lukewarm attitude, on the other hand, can invite and even prolong suffering. In St. John's Revelation the church of Laodicea was rebuked for the lukewarm attitude prevalent there. "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot," the message reads. "I would thou wert cold or hot." Rev. 3:15;
And certainly the master Christian, Christ Jesus, never recommended any tentative or equivocating attitude. At one time he admonished, "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay." Matt. 5:37;
The Science of Truth, by its very nature, is an orderly whole; all-encompassing, supreme. This means that when we decisively and unremittingly acknowledge any single spiritual fact, we can be assured that the authority and power of the whole Science moves logically into action in support of that acknowledgment. Fear is then impossible. The angel impartations flowing to us from divine Love silence the questions of doubting material sense: "Am I really the son of God?" "Can I demonstrate it?" "Will I succeed?" They reassure us with the authoritative "I am!" "I can!" and "I will!" of our divine sonship, emanating from infinite Mind.
But in Christian Science treatment one doesn't admit a discordant condition to be a fact of real being and then project a mental process at it in an effort to heal it. One starts with the eternal perfection of God and of His spiritual idea, man, as the only reality and never loses sight of that premise.
As this man (so different from what material sense conceives!), each of us is the expression of divine Mind's unerring knowledge of its own being. We see ourselves and everyone else in clear focus— the way Mind is knowing its ideas to be— immortal, beloved, free. In the degree we consciously take our stand right there, identify ourselves and others without reservations or wavering as the man of God's creating, we realize something of heaven, and our natural, God-given well-being comes to light.
In our daily activities there's a right way and a wrong way to be vehement. To the extent we allow personal willfulness to outline our mental positions, it's the wrong way, and the stirring that follows can be harmful. In the degree that we allow Principle, and its divine wisdom, to direct us, we're following the right way, and the stirring resulting therefrom will have a healing effect.
God, almighty Principle, absolute perfection, is Love; so we can see that Love, while utterly tender, is also very, very strong, watchful, precise. When we are firmly claiming our oneness with God as His sons and daughters, Love tells us when to wait, silently praying, and when to speak out with truth-telling and courage. This keeps us from either plunging prematurely or slipping wrongly into situations. It rules out any temptation to procrastinate or evade issues; it also enables us to act rightly with vigor and dispatch if the need arises.
What can we do at those painful times when relationships seem to be in conflict and wills colliding all around us? We can assert the truth—and, whether silently or audibly, we can do it with conviction. Truth, admitted into consciousness, cleanses and coordinates the human scene, even sweetens it! The ideas of God, originating in the heart of Love, can't do less than love each other. This is what is always going on in the one authentic universe, the kingdom of Spirit, God!
When false belief whispers to us that we feel burdened and anxious, perhaps pathetic and "put upon," that surely is a time to be vehement—to take up the whole package of emotional turmoil and cast it away from us. We can drop it forever as no more than mesmeric suggestion, not our own free, God-based thought at all. The inexpressible joy of loving and forgiving can melt away any hardness in thought and heal the scars.
What we need is an all-out surrender to Spirit, the sole and infinite self-existence, which we simply reflect. Why withhold anything on the side of personal selfhood? Isn't it the consciousness of God's unfailing fathering and mothering love for us, as His offspring, that is the fountainhead of true satisfaction and progress each hour of the day and each step of the way?
When any physical ailment seems to appear, we can instantly, fervently rebel against the sickly concepts and symptoms of false material belief. To assume the temporizing attitude of just "learning to live with it" is hardly being true to ourselves as the offspring of God. Speaking of the handling of a crisis in Christian Science healing, Mrs. Eddy makes this statement: "Insist vehemently on the great fact which covers the whole ground, that God, Spirit, is all, and that there is none beside Him. There is no disease." Science and Health, p. 421;
Spirit is cause. We are effect, the evidence of all that God is. It follows that the structure which constitutes our identity in Science is not physical, not skeletal, muscular, nervous; it is spiritual consciousness, reflecting Him. Spirit is our genuine substance. This substance is never sick or in pain, never stops working, ages, or dies. The law of Love perfectly regulates and controls every condition and function of man. We can be confident that such knowledge, insistently maintained, flushes away impure elements, mental and physical, dissolves abnormalities, quiets inflammation, readjusts and restores.
It broadens our perspective to recognize that as we apply Christian Science we're working out something far greater than any immediate problem confronting us. We're working out our entire careers, our eternal salvation. All the more reason, therefore, for us to vehemently claim our dominion at all times and in all conditions.
A young Air Force pilot had been grounded for not doing well, and it seemed probable he would be eliminated from his training program altogether. But during the evening before the Evaluation Board was to meet to make its final decision, he vehemently made a decision of his own. "I decided not to give up but to fight error," he wrote me in a letter describing the incident. "I remembered a passage from Proverbs: 'Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.'" Prov. 3:5, 6. Fervently relying on this statement, he not only was graduated but became an instructor in advanced jet flying, safely served his term in service, and has had steady promotions since.
When you sum it up, you can see that in Christian metaphysics only God's endorsement is a valid criterion for judging what is real. If something stems from Him, divine Love, it is true. Anything else is untrue, illegitimate, and is to be vehemently denied.
Whenever clouds gather and we feel fearful, confused, distressed, then a right sense of vehemence can help. It can be like an angel rousing us, steadying our hands, and calling us to greater dominion under the Father's pure guidance. And as we go forward, we see more and more clearly that really nothing whatever exists, in Love's ever-presence, to stop the march of Truth in consciousness or to hide the blessings it holds for us all.
* This article was renamed “Vehemence in the Truth” in the 1978 pamphlet “Precepts for healing.”
