God is all-loving and has provided all good for man. Yet, the abundance of good seems blatantly and pervasively challenged by the argument that good is something outside of us that we must get.
At one time when I had moved to a large metropolitan area, each morning a friend and I would walk to work past department stores whose display windows were filled with the latest fashions. The clothes were handsome, usually very expensive, and certainly beyond what we could afford at the time. One day I exclaimed, "It's terrible to see such good-looking clothes and not be able to afford them." My friend's reply was prompt and direct: "I'll tell you something that is worse. Having the money to buy them and then finding out that possessing them doesn't satisfy." That stopped me cold, and for the time being we said no more. But one day a few weeks later my friend remarked, "I notice you don't spend a lot of time looking in store windows anymore." After a moment of silence I admitted, "Well, no, I still don't have the money to buy the clothes, but at least I know that my good is not inside those display panels."
The true nature of good is described in this definition from the Glossary of Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy: "Good. God; Spirit; omnipotence; omniscience; omnipresence; omni-action." Science and Health, p. 587. To know and understand good as God only, as Spirit instead of matter, as all power, as the divine Mind, presence, and action, is to depart radically from the testimony of the material senses. Mortal thought is imbued with the belief that good is material; it is convinced through false education that substance is objective, outside and separate from man's identity, and obtained only through painstaking effort. So it mightily resists a basic truth taught in Christian Science: good is unfolding eternally within individual consciousness. We discover this fact as we understand and accept man's oneness with God, infinite good.
The carnal mind would send us on an endless chase. I had an experience that illustrated this point in a small but important way. One day I was walking a friend's dog, a little cairn terrier, much beloved, whose name is Sam. Sam and I were walking in the woods, and Sam was doing what he likes best, which is running after squirrels, though I am happy to say never with any success. At one point I had turned away for a moment and when I looked back I didn't find him. I thought he must have seen something more in the underbrush and gone after it, although I couldn't understand how he could have gotten away so fast. I looked all around me, but he had vanished. I then began calling him louder and louder until I was shouting, but he was nowhere to be seen. Terrible thoughts began to come to me, such as "What am I going to tell his owner? Will he ever be found? Is he hurt?" Now I was in a state of panic. Suddenly, inadvertently, I happened to glance down, and there, no more than an inch from my feet, was Sam looking up at me as if to say, "When you are finished shouting, I'm ready to go home." All the time he had been there, and I was only feeling my own fear and ignorance. I had been looking for him everywhere except where he was all the time, right with me.
There is a lesson here for all of us. The carnal mind would have us believing we have lost what we really need and looking all over for it. It would have us look to money and a job for supply, to people for companionship, to material structures for home, to material medical practices for health, and to personal status and fame for satisfaction and fulfillment. Christian Science shows that this search is misdirected, as illusory as the mind that propels it. Since good is Spirit, to look for good in matter is, in the final analysis, to end up with nothing. And that is what Spirit's allness exposes matter to be. Seeking for good in a material realm is reaching for that which seems within sight, but is never within grasp. True and lasting substance is found in the kingdom of God, within us, that kingdom which Christ Jesus declared to be at hand.
To recognize and grasp this present goodness, we need to see clearly that man is himself spiritual. Because this is our true nature, matter can neither give us anything nor deprive us of something we genuinely need. It is no more correct to seek good in matter than it is to accept any form of lack as legitimate or necessary. Christ Jesus declared, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10. Indicating the readiness of God to supply what is needed, he stated, 'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." Matt. 7:7, 8. Jesus clearly drew a line between genuine needs and mere human wants, however. He said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matt. 6:33.
To seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness first is to seek Truth for its own sake and not for what it can do for us. The truths of God and man revealed in Christian Science must be to us what we are and not simply something we use. To all who seek Truth in this manner—righteously—is revealed the kingdom within, a universal kingdom of spiritual ideas, emanating from God and unfolding within one's own consciousness under the government and wisdom of the one Mind. As we daily depart from the basis of belief that man is a material entity needing things separate and apart from his being, we come in increasing measure to understand the man of God's creating and caring. Man is God's idea, the conscious, individual expression of his creator, infinite Love. To demonstrate this fact daily brings freedom from want. The understanding of man's at-one-ment with God shows us that man embodies home, supply, completeness, which appear in tangible, legitimate ways in day-to-day experience.
Regardless of the physical senses' testimony, good in its infinity is all that is present. Therefore, since infinite good is already established, we never work to get rid of lack but simply to accept more of the infinite, which alone is present. Christian Science is not the Science of becoming or the Science of wanting and getting. It is the Science of being. We are actually what God created us to be, Spirit's full manifestation, so the spiritual fact is that want is unknown and all right needs are forever met. This truth reverses the appearance of deficiency and shows forth the unfoldment of Love's blessing.
At this point one might say, 'All right, those words sound wonderful on paper, but what about my needs, particularly that very special one that I have prayed about so much without results?" If we are confronted with such thoughts, we would do well to pause a moment and consider more deeply the nature of spiritual reality.
It is interesting to consider that the student of optics learns that everything one looks at first appears on the eye's retina in an inverted position. An optician would tell you that in this article you are now reading the words are initially appearing to you upside down. Of course we are conscious of them right side up because beginning at birth we learn to reverse the inverted images. We do it so automatically that we are not even conscious of it. But how alert are we to reverse other inverted images?
Christian Science is not the Science of becoming or the Science of wanting and getting. It is the Science of being.
Consider the question of need. Mortals have been falsely educated to think that they need what they do not have. But is this really the case? Since man is God's reflection, for man to lack, God would have to lack. The understanding of God's sufficiency, and therefore man's, has the potential to transform our experience radically if we are ready to acknowledge and accept it. We can right now refuse to be mesmerized. We can know that for the provision of a genuine need to be missing, God Himself would have to be less than complete. And since God could not be less than All, we can start now to reverse all suggestions of lack.
Science and Health states,"Divine metaphysics reverses perverted and physical hypotheses as to Deity, even as the explanation of optics rejects the incidental or inverted image and shows what this inverted image is meant to represent." Science and Health, p. 111. From this it follows that when a genuine need appears we can immediately recognize that the reverse is true and rejoice confidently that the need points to the fact that we already include what fulfills the need. We already have the right idea of whatever material sense says we lack. Material sense may seem persistent in arguing otherwise, but when we're enlightened by spiritual sense, we cannot be fooled.
It is spiritual sense that enables us quickly to reverse all inverted images. "Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God," Ibid., p. 209. Science and Health explains. The prophet Elijah relied on spiritual sense when he confronted the widow woman who thought that all she had left was a little oil in a cruse and some meal. "A conscious, constant capacity to understand God" enabled the prophet to reverse the argument of lack. The Bible states, "The barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah." I Kings 17:16. Spiritual sense, giving the ability to see beyond the lie of materiality and to understand what God has already provided, is inherent in every child of God. When the carnal mind argues lack, we must claim our spiritual sense, our right to know only what God knows.
A woman who had been serving for many years as a Christian Science practitioner suddenly was alone after her husband passed on. She was living in a large metropolitan area and at first was concerned that without his help, she might not be able to meet her home and office expenses. It occurred to her to make a mental list of the most important qualities of true manhood, such as firmness, strength, dependability She made it a point, whenever a quality of spiritual manhood was expressed in her experience by someone she knew or by a perfect stranger, to stop and silently be grateful. Each day she silently prayed to God, "Dear Father, enable me to express in my experience those manhood qualities that will give me the highest sense of completeness so that I may go forward and bless all mankind." She acknowledged that the qualities that she saw in others were actually inherent in her own identity. Over a period of about a year, it became increasingly clear to her that manhood was in qualities that she had always included within, and not in material persons. Since these qualities had never been in mortal personality, they could never be removed from her. She became so convinced of her completeness that she lost the consciousness of lack and stopped looking for results in matter. She found she had what she needed.
Later, she met a man she grew to love and enjoy. They felt they had found the right companion in each other, and were married. She and her new husband went on to have a wonderful marriage. But the marriage was not the healing. In Christian Science, evidence of healing is seen through spiritual sense when we stop looking to and searching for material objects outside ourselves and gain the inner assurance that we include all good. The right home, the right companionship, a proper sense of income, are the outward fulfilling of the human need. These are incidental to our recognition that God, divine Love, could do no less than to have provided the right idea even before the lie of lack could present itself.
The demonstration of these truths requires our active participation. We need both the quiet moments when we feel and acknowledge our oneness with God, and the active living of His qualities in our experience. We should frequently pause and ask ourselves: "Just how much of divine Mind's intelligence and wisdom am I accepting and bringing forth? Am I evidencing the integrity and reliability of Principle, the clarity and discernment of Truth, the inspiration and originality of Soul? Am I bringing out true, spiritual love in my daily life? Am I listening to and accepting the ideas God is giving me?" Whatever the need, and in spite of how long the answer to it may have eluded us, spiritual growth will always enable us to perceive the right idea.
We should be as careful to exclude negative qualities as we are to accept the true ones. Destructive criticism, habitual faultfinding, resentment, envy, remorse, grudge-holding, are all fatal to spiritual advancement. We must be constant in rejecting them. If we really understood how lethal they are to effective Christian demonstration, we would never indulge them for a single moment. Heed the words of the Leader of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy, who says: "I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not, and saying to them, 'I love you, and would not knowingly harm you.' Because I thus feel, I say to others: Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave. If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget...." She continues later in this paragraph, "Never return evil for evil; and, above all, do not fancy that you have been wronged when you have not been." Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 11-12.
The good that is God is the only good worth having because it is the only good that is. Unless the good we bring forth unfolds from our understanding of our oneness with God and our expression of His qualities, it lacks the reality and permanence of true substance. No matter how large the bank account, how grand the home, how enjoyable the relationship, if they result from human effort alone rather than from the realization and demonstration of spiritual truth, they are but sand castles only waiting to be washed away by the vagaries of time and sense. In such cases, the spiritual growth we may have avoided still awaits us.
It is important that we never outline the how and means by which good must appear in our experience. Divine Love meets all legitimate needs, though not always in the way we might think, for at times we may not even know what our true need is. Our greatest need is always for more spiritual enlightenment—to understand God. But even humanly our real need may be quite different from what we have been hoping for. Divine Love, which is unerring intelligence and perfect wisdom, does know what we really need. As ideas unfold we must be alert to see them in their true light, as spiritual and not as material entities. They will become humanly tangible, but as we understand them in their true and original identity, they are protected from the vicissitudes of mortal belief. As we continually discipline ourselves always to look within consciousness for the answer to every need, we will find there is no limit to the good that will appear in our life. The good that is discerned spiritually as already within consciousness is the good that appears without, always.
