Taking a stand for Truth

There was a game my cousins, brothers, and I used to play in a round swimming pool. We would all walk around in a circle until the water’s currents were so strong that we could lift up our feet and then be carried by the current. But, if we wanted to stop the current, we would plant our feet firmly on the bottom of the pool. Swimming against the currents never worked, as we’d usually quickly tire or get swept away, but planting our feet firmly always did the trick, and the water would become still.

I’ve begun to realize what a profound analogy that is of taking a stand for Truth as the only valid power. But more on that later.

Speaking the truth has been a way to challenge social wrongs and to help establish justice. However, here’s an additional point to consider: If evil, malice, hate, or injustice is accepted as having any real power at all, reforms won’t go far enough to transform how we live, or how we can bring about healing. But Christ Jesus gave us a way to understand power and Truth in a way that disarms evil and continues to transform and heal today.

Jesus lifted up the ideas of truth and power to the absolute and spiritual. He taught that there is only one legitimate power: God, who is divine Truth, Mind, and Love. To understand God as omnipotent, and Truth as a light dissolving the darkness of human suffering, is to understand Jesus’ statement, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

Christ Jesus didn’t give sickness or sin any power or influence. For example, after he told a man who for years had been unable to walk, “Rise, take up your bed, and walk,” he didn’t then add, “...if that’s possible.” His healing prayer came as a command. And the man rose up and walked (see John 5:3-8).

Mary Baker Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science articulates the repeatable and practical precepts behind Jesus’ teachings and explains that Truth is God, unopposed good. Omnipotent Truth is a constant with no variables. Currents of fear, anger, and vulnerabilities may seem to swirl about us, but spiritual Truth, Love, is immovable.

Like the analogy of the swimming pool mentioned above, our efforts to swim against the currents are frustrating, tiresome. But when we plant ourselves – our consciousness – in the understanding of Truth’s omnipotence, the stability and stillness of Truth reign in thought and experience.

Praying in this way releases depressed hope and opens thought to healing. Knowing God, Truth, as the only power gives us a stronghold when we seek to heal error of any kind. Why? Because by acknowledging God as the sole power, we cannot actually give discord of any kind, any power – by believing in it, willfully fighting against it, or going along with it.

Effective healing prayer includes knowing that God, good, is the one cause and has the only ability to produce an effect. Evil, malice, injustice, etc, is a supposed absence of good. In order for evil to have any so-called power or influence, someone needs to believe in it, because it has no power of its own.

Some might agree that we are living in a period with great wonders and unprecedented activity. Some might consider that we are living in tumultuous times. But consider that we are living in an age where thought is turning from a material to a spiritual, metaphysical basis. We can hasten the progress of this time by refusing to give evil or discord any power by letting go of fear and frustration. We can feel the moral courage to “speak the truth to every form of error,” as Mrs. Eddy puts it in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 418), and regularly plant our feet firmly on the foundation of Christ’s healing truth – the true idea of spiritual power. We, too, can pray with conviction.

This conviction – recognizing Truth, God, as the only power – reverses currents of fear and discord, and brings the stability of rejuvenated peace and healing progress.

Adapted from an editorial published in the May 8, 2017, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.