`She's Trouble!'
THAT'S what a friend said--with a delighted sparkle in his eye--of a woman about to join our work. But his lighthearted manner told me she'd be causing "trouble that would be good for us. And he was right. She was a joy to work with. But she was not shy in the least about insisting on the highest standards of honesty and integrity in what we did. And her insistence on the highest standards boosted our work to the very top of its class.
Of course, this woman wasn't really being troublesome. Everyone working with us wanted integrity to characterize our work. She stood out, though, because she didn't treat integrity as an afterthought. She practiced it and insisted that we practice it too.
That's the thing about truth--it's insistent. In the Bible, Matthew's Gospel tells us about another woman--a Canaanite. She approached Christ Jesus seeking healing for her daughter. Evidently she was insistent, for Jesus' disciples "besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. That persistence won out because Jesus healed her daughter, saying, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.
Why is the desire for truth and integrity so persistent and unrelenting? Perhaps because truth itself is based in God's own nature and being. One of the ways to think of God is as divine Truth. Truth-- when used to mean God--is much more than simply a humanly good or moral quality. It by all means includes everything moral. But more than that, divine Truth is what is actual, what is real, what is without falsity or distortion.
Man--our actual, spiritual identity--is the offspring of Truth, or God, because God is the creator of all. Only in Spirit, God, could you find such a thing as absolute, perfect Truth. Because God is the source of man's intelligence, only what is Godlike characterizes his thought. And since truth is in everything God knows and does, then such qualities as integrity, purity, honesty, fidelity, are a natural part of man's being.
Could such a fact ever present trouble to you and me? Of course! If we're thinking in ways that are devious or lacking in integrity, we're not matching up with man as created by God--not living up to our genuine selfhood. This has a way of returning to us time and again until Christ "troubles our conscience to recognize the mistake and correct it.
By showing us the spiritual nature of our own being, Christ, Truth, awakens the deep morality that is already part of our nature. It shows us that by living in a way that more nearly matches what we understand of our true being as man created by God, who is Truth, we increase our own well-being in tangible ways.
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, urges us along this path. She says: "Christian Science commands man to master the propensities,--to hold hatred in abeyance with kindness, to conquer lust with chastity, revenge with charity, and to overcome deceit with honesty. Choke these errors in their early stages, if you would not cherish an army of conspirators against health, happiness, and success.
Truth cuts through greed, moral deadness, or even ignorance. It turns us face to face with Christ's spiritual demand for honest, true thinking and acting. God, divine Truth, does an excellent job of renewing, changing, and redeeming us. "Truth makes a new creature, says Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health, "in whom old things pass away and `all things are become new.' We may end up being "big trouble ourselves in matters demanding truth--as all matters do!
