Is being good, dull?

YOU'VE heard people say that if we were all good, life would be pretty dull. Nevertheless, not being wholly good is taking a considerable toll in the 1980s. It's interesting how clich'es can muddle larger issues. Sometimes it's suggested a little devilment adds spice to life. Experimentation can frequently take on a mischievous and benign appearance. Not being so ``strait-laced'' promises a lot more fun!

Yet, there is a hard side to the fevered pitch of human excitement. Alcoholism, unhappy marriages, accidents, and so forth often bring even the merriest and most footloose adventurers back to the harsh mortality of human existence.

Nevertheless, there's a spiritual perspective on being all good that opens exciting worlds yet unexplored. Christian Science reveals God as infinite Life, Love, Soul, and Mind; in Him there is no death, no disease, no evil. He's all good. What this means for us is filled with tremendous possibilities.

Since God is Soul, the source of all spiritual sense and vision, then our being all good -- as God's spiritual expression -- without any of the debilitations or limitations of mortality, opens vistas of unimagined beauty and splendor. Imagine that the most beautiful and breathtaking scene you've ever gazed upon only hints at the reality of divine good. Imagine what it would mean if the beauty you've cherished in a loved one's expression were never to be touched by blemish, age, or death; what it would be like to feel music in your heart and be able simultaneously to express it in compositions exceeding the grandeur and magnificence of Chopin played by Horowitz. But remember, these pictures are only human ones. As magnificent as they are, they only suggest the magnificence and total reality of the infinitude of divine good.

Think about God as Mind, infinite Mind. Imagine what it would mean to be totally free from ignorance, the ignorance that frightens and binds our lives to backwardness and the doubts of spiritual immaturity.

And since God is eternal Life, what would it mean to actually experience complete freedom from the fear of death and evil? Think about never fearing for your children's or parents' welfare, or anyone else's who is dear to you. Begin to catch a glimpse of how wonderful it would be not to worry about what your health will be like tomorrow, or next year, or twenty years from now. All of us have within ourselves spiritual sense, even if not much developed or wholly understood, and right now that sense reveals what all good really is.

Think about God's infinite, unfailing love -- the love of the One who is Love, with no hate, no envy, no favoritism, no anger. All good would mean no more broken promises, no more fear of lack of strength to be good, no more crushing disappointment in yourself or others.

Take the opportunity and think more about what it would mean to be, as God's expression, all good. Even more important than thinking about it is striving to live on this basis.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures about the spiritual-mindedness that leads to true self-knowledge and fulfillment: ``As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible. When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness.''1

Until we learn to cut loose wholly from the heartless, material belief that we can't be (or don't want to be) all good, there will be hardships in human life. But the fact is these hardships can't stop us from progressively discovering our real spiritual selfhood as God's child.

The reality of God lies outside the human mind's conjectures and schemes. The human mind is not really ``you,'' though it's certainly a complex and self-deluded counterfeit of true thinking and living. God is all good, and man is His image and likeness. We can begin now to find out what this means and to experience the allness of divine good. Christ Jesus said, ``Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.''2 Get hungry, develop a thirst that only being all good can quench.

1Science and Health, p. 264. 2Matthew 5:6. This is a condensed version of an editorial that appeared in the September 28 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5:48