We're all in school
PERSPECTIVE can help when problems crop up in our journey through life. It's a great temptation to let troubles fill our consciousness so that we find ourselves constantly thinking about them, feeling threatened by them, and wondering how to get over or around them. No matter how big and insurmountable a trouble may seem, however, our most important need -- greater even than a solution -- is to gain the spiritual insight that sees things in a proper perspective. In working to gain that insight we're being forced to work out our own salvation. In a sense, we're all in school being taught of God -- and what is He teaching us? ``I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself,...That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength: even to him shall men come.''1
To look at any challenge from the perspective only of limited, material resources, whether the trouble is sickness, unemployment, business failure, or family disunity, is an open invitation to become discouraged and defeated. But looked at from a spiritual viewpoint -- from the Christly viewpoint exemplified by Jesus -- problems take on a totally different character. They become the means by which we learn to turn to the only source of indisputable power there is: to God, the Father-Mother of all. And as we learn to turn, and find from experience that troubles can be resolved by mentally bowing the knee to the ever-operating law of God, we develop the spiritual dominion necessary to achieve the primary goal of our existence -- to realize the kingdom of God within us in the way that Christ Jesus came to show us.
In school we learn early that progress is expected of us, that mastery of the subjects we're taught comes only as we learn to solve the problems we're given, and that final graduation is really a test of the dominion we've developed. It's similar with the problems we face in nonacademic pursuits. There is a spiritual answer for every challenge we're facedwith, and the appearance of the answer demands that we subordinate fear to the conviction that the answer is there to be uncovered, and get to work to learn and embody the spiritual laws that reveal the answer.
As Jesus showed us -- by example as much as by words -- the law of God acts to maintain the goodness, health, integrity, and freedom that are intrinsic to His perfect spiritual creation. God's law, understandingly appealed to, destroys the diseases and propensities which, from a solely human perspective, appear to blot out of consciousness the ability to discern and respond to His law. As we bring our thinking and our lives into conformance with God's law, and learn to seek and trust His perfect understanding instead of our own, we gain the Christly perspective that heals, a spiritual sense of dominion.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: ``Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil.''2
As we gain a spiritual perspective through prayer and purification of thought, and learn to see our problems as impelling progress on the way to the full dominion of man in God's image, we'll tackle them more cheerfully and effectively. We'll learn from them that God is truly with us and that the kingdom of heaven is an achievable goal.
1Isaiah 45:22-24. 2Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.233. You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 31:34
