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The language that unites us

A Christian Science perspective.

  • By Kevin Graunke

A recent headline summed up the mood permeating society at many levels these days: “A Nation Divided: Can We Agree On Anything?” From “occupying” public places to governmental gridlock to radio talk shows, dispute appears to be favored above reason, while argument overrides civility, compromise, and actual communication.

The article asked, “Are we always contentious, never content? Always warring, never loving? How will we ever resolve our differences?”

Perhaps we can begin by learning a new/old universal language, one that can be freely understood by everyone – the language of divine Love spoken and lived by Christ Jesus. This is the native tongue in which he opened a dialogue with a woman at the extreme opposite end of the social and religious spectrum from himself. She was a Samaritan; Jesus, a Jew – and their respective peoples had built up walls of bitter hatred against each other for hundreds of years.

Yet Jesus immediately broke through those impenetrable barriers of nationality, religious differences, and distrust with a request so simple, basic, and yet so profound: a drink of water (see John 4:1-29).

From their very first words at the edge of the well, Jesus recognized not an enemy, but the woman of God’s creating. And then he offered her living water – the very Christ, the present knowledge of the Messiah’s peace, power, and grace. This refreshing and tangible evidence of God’s love to her, to everyone, touched her life deeply.

This ever-flowing, loving presence of the Christ can unite us today in that same common bond: seeing and genuinely appreciating the good in each other. By removing the destructive liabilities of hate and polarization, Christ effectively and quickly resolves arguments by calling on divine Love to dissolve the reaction and anger behind the yelling.

The founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, has given our world a spiritually practical way to strengthen that bond. She wrote, “Each day I pray: ‘God bless my enemies; make them Thy friends; give them to know the joy and the peace of love’ ” (“The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany,” p. 220).

We can do the same. Starting today.

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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.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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