The history of you -- rewritten
Think of St. Paul. He'd wreaked havoc on the early Christian Church. He'd set up others for persecution. He'd even played a part in killing a man. It was a past that might have haunted him for decades. Apparently it didn't, though.From the time of his conversion he moved ahead with freshness and conviction. He once wrote, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are become new." n1 And, instead of forever lingering over the old mistakes and failure, it appears he genuinely kept is sense of himself up to date -- in step with a new, more spiritual understanding. It's an example we can emulate as our lives are transformed by the healing Christ.
n1 II Corinthians 5:17.
The Christ, which Jesus lived so fully, is still active today -- felt as the transofrming, redeeming power of God. The power of the Christ can unburden you of mistakes or regrets you've been loaded with over the years. Those past failures can be faced up to, then erased, and replaced. Replaced by an understanding of the true nature of man in the image of God, and by the conforming of our thoughts and lives to that divine reality.
It's not a matter of booting into our mental basement those parts of our personal history we don't like to think about. It's not a matter of hanging the blame for them on a psychological quirk or an uncontrollable circumstance. It is a matter of taking responsibility for what we've done, honestly facing up to our past and then correcting whatever mistakes we spot. God, divine Love, makes this possible through His Christ. Maybe we can't go back physically and pay for the hitand-run damage we did to a stranger's car ten years ago. Still, we need to deal with it. And we can. (of course, we'd make restitution for stolen or damaged property whenever possible.)
The Bible says, "God requireth that which is past," n2 and an understanding of the timeless Christ equips us to revise our past in line with what has always been true about man as God has made him -- true about us as God has made us. Once we've scrubbed it off our mental slate, that past mistake is gone. We see it never was an actual part of our consciousness or being. We can chalk up something better in its place. Then, moving ahead without guilt, we can behave in a way that proves our true Christly nature to be the only one we honestly have.
n2 Ecclesiastes 3:15.
The same thing goes for a history of poor health. That record of illness can be erased and replaced by the redeeming, transforming, healing power of the Christ -- a power that floods the human scene with hope and assurance and help; that reveals our true and only history to be good, expressing God's nature.
Christian Science, or the Science of Christ, explains the nature of God as perfect Life, Truth, Love, which the Bible clearly shows. It explains the nature of man, created by God, to be perfect, the never-sinful never-sick expression of Life, Truth, Love. And this Science of Christ shows that we can demonstrate these spiritual truths in proportion to our understanding of them. As we do this, we'll find we're able to correct past mistakes, even the ones we thought uncorrectable. The personal history we're "writting" today will be more expressive of Love and Truth and Life. And the future, because it's less burdened bny past failures, will have more promise than we imagined possible.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, challenged the beliefs of evil very pointedly: "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged." n3 We can begin this work today, basing it on a spiritual understanding of God and man. We can couple that with an honest desire to let spiritual truth surface in everyday life -- to replace worn-out materialistic ways of thinking with purity, and loyalty to the one God. Then we'll find we can state with Paul, "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." And we will be making a true statement. We will have begun to rewrite our history -- not from a mortal, material point of view but from an entirely spiritual one.
n3 Restrospection and Introspection,m P. 22.
DAILY BIBLE VERSE We shall all be changed. . . . For . . . this mortal must put on immortality. I Corinthians 15:51, 53
