A loud, sweet song

GET in a cab, walk into a store, just sit in the park, and you are liable to find yourself listening to songs that contain suggestive, even pornographic lyrics. The image of human existence pressed upon us can seem chaotic, animalistic. Rock music--the energized, declamatory art form of our age--is sometimes turned into a vehicle for promoting despair and sin. This fact has brought about a groundswell of protest from parents' groups, civic associations, and individuals alarmed at the extent and the virulence of sensualism in some of today's rock music. An agreement has been reached by leading record companies to put warning labels on recordings the manufacturers deem suggestive or pornographic. It is clear, though, that warning labels alone won't counteract the floodtide of sensual imagery in the record industry. What's needed is the willingness to confront t his challenge with the kind of spiritual vision that empowered the words and works of Christ Jesus. ``The constant spectacle of sin thrust upon the pure sense of the immaculate Jesus made him a man of sorrows,'' 1 writes Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. But Mrs. Eddy makes clear that Jesus turned these sorrows into joy; that he triumphed over the spectacle of sin. By his words and actions, he exposed the carnal mind as a false claimant to power, as ``a liar, and the father of it.'' 2 While it may seem that we are all subject to passions and impulses common to humanity, Jesus showed that the carnal mind that houses these impulses is itself fraudulent. Jesus' prayer was dynamic and powerful, both in exposing sin and in disarming it. He taught his followers to cast devils, evils, out of themselves and the world around them. Then and now, the number of people believing in the power of sin, or the number asserting the absolute power of God, is significant; yet true power is in God, not in numbers, and there's no limit to the good reflected by an individual consciousness activated by the conviction that man is the blessed and sinless child of God. The Bible tells us about God's loving care for anyone engulfed in a worldly sense of existence: ``If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.'' 3 The ransom we need is the Christliness found in scientific Christianity, which heals sickness and sin through the power of God; which frees men and women from the bondage of believing that they are mortals, separated from God, either enjoying sin or suffering from it. And can't we think of the ``one among a thousand'' as that individual willing to bear witness to the spotless sonship that God bestows on the man of His creating? Today, the world is in desperate need of the prayerful, scientific realization that sin is a lie about the image of God. The picture of sinful humanity may appear quite immovable to our sense of things; yet to the sense that Jesus entertained, man is beautiful, pure, complete, blessed by God. Does this mean that we can close our ears to sin and despair and hum a pleasant little tune of our own? Hardly. We need to see immorality for what it is. But we must also recognize and nurture the rising tide of moral sensitiveness and longing for righteousness that are themselves shedding light on impositions of sin. Then we can go still further and look to God in prayer for that spiritual consciousness that counters the chimera of sin with the full chorus of praise due an all-good God, who looked on all He had made and pronounced it ``very good.'' There is a divine promise to those who see, and persevere in seeing, the sinless, perfect creation of God. Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook: ``For victory over a single sin, we give thanks and magnify the Lord of Hosts. What shall we say of the mighty conquest over all sin? A louder song, sweeter than has ever before reached high heaven, now rises clearer and nearer to the great heart of Christ; for the accuser is not there, and Love sends forth her primal and everlasting strain.'' 4 1 Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 18. 2 John 8:44. 3 Job 33:23, 24. 4 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 568.