Negotiations and sacrifice

It would seem easier to conduct negotiations between those holding opposing viewpoints if one side were clearly in the wrong. The task then might be to apply moral pressure (backed up by the possibility of further action) until the wrong viewpoint yields and sacrifices a position that - because it is wrong - comes to be seen as having no right to exist.

But when both viewpoints seem equally in the right, negotiation becomes much more difficult. It would appear that the only way to humanly achieve the compromise that represents a successful negotiation is for each side to sacrifice something that it is convinced is right, and that does, therefore, have a right to exist. Compromises of this nature rarely endure, because the principals continue to seek new ways to recapture what they feel was wrongfully sacrificed.

A sacrifice is indeed required to achieve the lasting peace that the world must someday come to demonstrate; but God never demands a sacrifice of that which is right. What must be given up is that which blinds mankind to the order and harmony of a universe fully obedient to God's law. We must give up the carnal mind, which Paul warned is ''enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.'' n1

n1 Romans 8:7.

The so-called carnal mind presents an erroneous view - a denial - of the infinity of God's goodness and the universality of His law. It's a view that cannot comprehend how safety and orderly growth can be achieved other than at someone else's expense. It's a view that sees in another's bounty a deprivation of one's own opportunity; a view that good is a limited resource controlled by others, which can only be attained for oneself through strife and kept by force. It's a view that influences most of us far more than perhaps we realize, and it is the true enemy of peace everywhere.

To divest ourselves of this influence and to earnestly seek the Mind of Christ - the divine Mind that is God - is the true meaning of prayer; it's the one sacrifice that God doesm demand of us, and which His law will progressively enforce. Only the prayer that affirms God's infinite goodness, and denies the supposed reality of any will opposed to His, will bring the peace that really ism peace.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: ''Jesus said, 'I came not to destroy the law,' - the divine requirements typified in the law of Moses, - 'but to fulfil it' in righteousness, by Truth's destroying error. No greater type of divine Love can be presented than effecting so glorious a purpose. This spirit of sacrifice always has saved, and still saves mankind; but by mankind I mean mortals, or a kind of men after man's own making. Man as God's idea is already saved with an everlasting salvation.'' n2

n2 Miscellaneous Writings,m p. 261.

The true identity of each individual in each of the world's nations exists already as a spiritual idea maintained and sustained by that divine Mind which beheld all that was created and saw that it was very good. As we obey Moses' first commandment by seeking no other viewpoint than this, and by denying activity to the carnal mind, which would divide and blind mankind to this true, Christly viewpoint, we will be making the only sacrifice that counts. We will be knowing the truth that frees, that reveals to us howm to live together in harmony. DAILY BIBLE VERSE The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. II Corinthians 10:4, 5