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Breaking the mocking habit

A Christian Science perspective.

  • By Louise White

My children and I used to spend a short time each morning reading together a section from the Christian Science Bible Lesson.

One week the children were deeply touched by the courage Jesus showed through his trial before Pilate. The Bible tells of the soldiers mocking Jesus: “When they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!” (Matthew 27:29).

“Why did they mock him?” the children asked with sadness. After some discussion we decided that mocking can happen when others are afraid of you, or when they don’t understand you – or even when they want to hide their pride behind sarcasm, using their words to wound you.

It was a shock, then, to realize that our family frequently used mocking to make fun of each other. Sometimes what seemed like a joke or a clever way of correcting would stab and hurt a family member. With quiet sincerity, we each promised that we would not mock anymore.

It wasn’t easy to stop our old ways of laughing at each other’s mistakes and apparent weaknesses. The Bible gave us strength: “Charity ... rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth” (I Corinthians 13:4, 6, American King James Version). This assured us that God’s love corrects firmly and patiently, without humiliation. God shines His law through our hearts and minds, and there is a balance between His moral law and His unconditional mercy.

We were able to soften our words. We never lost the wonderful ability to laugh at problems (and occasionally poke gentle, harmless fun at each other), but a new poise and compassion replaced the mocking habit.

Political campaigns, news reports, and talk-show hosts are often harshly critical, publicly jumping on someone’s mistakes. Verbal abuse and bullying are extreme examples of mocking, and this kind of dark thought can become a habit, which ends in a cynical attitude toward our world. Yet Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “You may condemn evil in the abstract without harming any one or your own moral sense, but condemn persons seldom, if ever. Improve every opportunity to correct sin through your own perfectness” (“The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany,” p. 249).

Our purpose is clearly to be more Godlike – to express His wisdom and strength through every trial. Our words are not meant to tear down; they should instead be valuable messages to support and heal.

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Mark Sappenfield
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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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