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The transparency most needed

If we want more transparency in the world, explains today’s contributor, letting God’s light work its purifying effect in our own lives is an important step.

  • By Barbara Vining

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
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There is an outcry across the world for more transparency. This desire for openness is nothing new. Transparency brings whatever is wrong to light so that it can be corrected for the benefit of everyone.

In this regard, experience has shown me that the light most needed is spiritual – light from God, divine Love, that purifies consciousness and redirects actions. And if we want to see more transparency in society, we need to start with ourselves. We need to let God’s spiritual illumination work its purifying effect in our own lives.

Christ Jesus told his disciples that they were the “light of the world” and that they should not hide that light “under a bushel” (Matthew 5:14, 15). His teachings reveal man’s true nature as found in the divine Spirit, which is all goodness and light; no evil, no darkness, can hide or even exist there. The Apostle Paul wrote, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). We need to let our lives be transparent enough for God’s goodness to shine through for everyone’s benefit.

I caught a glimpse of what it means to live this kind of transparency some years ago when visiting a friend in a hospital. I prayed to have a clear enough spiritual consciousness so that I would not get weighed down by my friend’s difficulties, but instead my visit would actually contribute to her recovery. The thought came to me that the sun’s rays aren’t affected by what they shine on; they simply shine out from their source and shed light on everything in their path. I saw a connection with the teachings of Christian Science – that God, Spirit, the divine source from which our true being shines, fills all space, and that there is no unpleasantness in Spirit or Spirit’s expression.

So I acknowledged Spirit’s presence and trusted Spirit to shine through me in that hospital. And my friend and I both felt God’s healing love during that visit.

Just as nothing can come between the sun and its rays, nothing can come between Spirit and its purifying light. But in order for spiritual light and its healing effect to be seen, the human mind must become transparent enough for that light to shine through. And that is something we can each give our daily attention to.

This passage in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, has the marginal heading “Goodness transparent” and has been especially helpful to me: “The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality – much error – in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun” (p. 295).

It’s a wonderful thing to realize that we truly are inseparable from God, divine Truth – that we are actually the light coming from God. To our material senses that is not at all what we seem to be. To think of our consciousness, however, as a windowpane through which the light of divine Truth can shine, can inspire us to let that windowpane become as shiny clean as possible.

It is divine Love that brings spiritual purification, healing, and reformation into human thought and lives. The role for you and me is to humbly yield to God’s power to expose and remove whatever in our thoughts or character is unlike God. God’s love does this in the way light always displaces darkness. Man in God’s spiritual likeness is not only light, but the solvent that dissolves whatever would cloud our consciousness and hide Truth. In proportion as we willingly and joyfully consent to what God, divine Love, is revealing to us of our likeness to Him, sickness and sinful tendencies are displaced.

We all want a world where transparency is lived – where selfish, harmful thoughts and acts cannot hide. Progress in this direction comes by letting Spirit’s cleansing love shine more brightly in and through our own consciousness and character, enabling the cleansing light of Spirit to do its work of healing in us and to shine out with healing for the world.

Adapted from an editorial published in the April 1, 2019, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.

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