Tell the Truth

Archive for October, 2009

22:11-12
“Work out your own salvation,” is the demand of Life and Love, for to this end God worketh with you.

Prov 6:5 (KJV)
Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.

How could this be said unless this salvation was not up to us? If it was not our work and our responsibility and within our power to accomplish?

Who punishes us if we do wrong? Well, who punishes us if we make a mistake in math? The wrong answer is our punishment and the unchanging, unwavering principle of mathematics requires the punishment of us.

So it is with our mistakes in life, whether committed through ignorance or malice. The sin or mistake provides appropriate punishment by creating inharmonious conditions in our life. Love, God’s Principle—the unchanging and unwavering Principle of good demands it. It is neither vengeful, spiteful nor moralistic—it is merely the activity of reality and Truth maintaining divine Life, Truth and Love in its eternal perfect state.

497:9-11 We
We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal.

339:1-4 The
The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. Divine Life destroys death, Truth destroys error, and Love destroys hate. Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness.

22:30-31
Justice requires reformation of the sinner. Mercy cancels the debt only when justice approves.

The solution satisfying both justice and mercy is for us to turn and walk the other way, and we are the one’s who must do the turning—in that lies our salvation, and it is our work to do with the help of God’s eternal grace.

3:4
Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray the principle of mathematics to solve the problem? The rule is already established, and it is our task to work out the solution. Shall we ask the divine Principle of all goodness to do His own work? His work is done, and we have only to avail ourselves of God’s rule in order to receive His blessing, which enables us to work out our own salvation.

Infinity and the finite cannot both exist. Either everything is finite, or everything is part of the infinite God. If God is All-in-all, then (the little) all must be part of the (big) All. If I have all the marbles, then you can’t have any.

What we see then as our limited and personal mind—ignorant, limited, varying in quality from person to person—must then in reality be a part of the infinitely intelligent, unlimited and perfect Mind we call God. Our ignorance then is an ignorance, not of a knowledge and understanding of ideas, but an ignorance of Being that seems to separate and cut us off from an awareness of the true nature of our mind.

Judging reality from observation may work well for natural phenomena, but not when seeking the right relation between God and man. Can you imagine trying to understand the principle of mathematics by looking over the shoulders of a class of third graders? Jesus told us to not judge by appearances but to judge righteous judgment—not by appearances, but by Principle, by spiritual reasoning.

Judging reality by appearances would reduce the one infinite Mind to many minds and the infinite Intelligence to an endless personal variation of limited intelligence. Infinity is thereby be lost, perfection made imperfect and the limitless circumscribed.

The common view of God as being the old man in the sky reduces Principle to person and distorts the true meaning of infinity.

There is only one cause—mind. Nothing can come into being except through this one cause. Disease cannot enter my experience through physical, organic or physiological activity. It can only enter through thought. Since mind is cause, it cannot be effect. I cannot be a victim. My thoughts are either creating new and improved experiences, making things worse, or perpetuating my current circumstances, for thought is creative. My choice.

…love means and is repose, ease, certainty, peace, courage, calmness, understanding—these give dominion. See The Sickle, page 100, “This feeling of certainty, engendered through our actually understanding that there is but the good side to all Life, is what John meant by the word Love.” Florence B. Stranahan writing in Messages on Christian Science, Series I

251:20 the divine
…the divine Mind makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind, and the healer of sin, disease, death. This process of higher spiritual understanding improves mankind until error disappears, and nothing is left which deserves to perish or to be punished.

Rom 12:2
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

I John 3:2,3
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

255:1 (only)
    Eternal Truth is changing the universe.

Truth is working in your consciousness, renewing your mind, transforming you, changing your world, and will continue to do so until error disappears and nothing is left which deserves to perish. That is a cause for awesome hope in the face of tests, trials, sin, disease and death.

45:16
   Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts!  Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.

 405:5-6 (to ,)
    Christian Science commands man to master the propensities,

Christian Science commands man to master his natural inclinations—like my overeating. My natural inclination is to eat for the pleasure of taste and texture, for the physical sensation of it. An attachment to physical sensation is sin. If my inclination was merely to satisfy my hunger, then I wouldn’t be overweight.

In reality I am eating to satisfy my hunger, but the goal of sense is for something else—something unrelated—sensation and the experience of taste and texture.

It is as though I am navigating through the countryside while looking at the wrong map. My eyes are fixed on a destination, but my vehicle is heading in a different direction.

One statement that I’ve been working with lately is one of Unity’s five tenets—“Everything in the manifest realm has its beginning in thought.” My challenge then is to awaken—to begin to eat consciously with the right destination as well as the right map in mind.

Both mortal mind and body will be manacled until I balance my account with God on the bathroom scales.

 537:13-15
“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Error excludes itself from harmony. Sin is its own punishment.

Sin is unreal. It is like someone who insists that 2+2=5 because it brings him some pleasure. It is a trap of the corporeal senses. As long as we cling to it, we will be making math errors and our checkbooks will be off, our buildings will be askew, and our rockets will be off target.

 327:12-13
The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning. There is no other way.

It were well to begin from this hour, as you read these pages, to reckon Life only in what is good and true; putting aside evil as unreal, not the offspring of God, and unworthy to be named man, him whom Spirit produces “the image and likeness of God,” but whom matter claims to create in sin. From Science and Health, 1^st edition, by Mary Baker Eddy.

290:19-20
Perfection is gained only by perfection.

The only way to do math perfectly is to perfectly understand and apply the principle. So it is with life.

If you believe sin, sickness and death are inevitable experiences of Life and not the result of a poor understanding and application of the divine Principle, you will neither seek to correct your error, nor to increase your understanding of the divine Principle in order to do so.

 487:30-1
    This faith relies upon an understood Principle. This Principle makes whole the diseased, and brings out the enduring and harmonious phases of things.

What is this Principle to be understood?

• God’s perfection and man’s reflection of Him—Perfect God and perfect man.
• Man has not a single quality underived from deity.
• The scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness.
• Man’s relationship to God is the relation of the sunbeam to God.

There are many ways to state it, but once grasped, it is infinitely applicable to every situation in our lives—whether health, supply, relationships, or employment.