Dominion now
India has made remarkable strides during the last few decades in getting control over its agricultural difficulties.The country has achieved significant increases in food production -- and during what in times past would have been considered a devastating drought.
One reason for India's success is put forward by Girilal Jain, editor of the Times of India.m ". . . fatalism, almost endemic to the Indian psyche," says Mr. Jain in a Monitorm series published in March, "is beginning to retreat." He gives this example: "If a crop fails or the rains don't come, the villagers no longer accept the dismal news as their fate. They immediately start trying to plant a new crop or make some kind of adjustment that will help mitigate the setback."
This is encouraging news. How many of us have made equivalent progress in overcoming fatalism and its harmful effects?
Many people today don't embrace fatalism as the word is defined narrowly: the belief that all events are predetermined by fate and are hence inevitable. Yet don't many of us accept the symptoms of a cold, for instance, as foretelling a certain period of indisposition from which there is no escape?
Such beliefs are fatalistic, and they are just as destructive -- and unnecessary -- as the belief that bad weather is a sign that a farmer should give up.
Evil is never inevitable. God's immortal law, not some mindless material force, governs the universe, and this law is good. Man lives under this law, for he is spiritual and not material.
The evil that seems inevitable, whether it's disease or any other discord, is at base the false belief that life is material, that we may rise above limited physical natures at times, but that we are fundamentally mortals, born in sin and destined to die. We may not understand the true nature of man well enough at this point to prove the unreality of death for ourselves, but, like the Indian farmer, we can learn to work harder when everyday troubles happen instead of accepting them, and grow gradually in the ability to be all that God made us to be. God's law, understood, gives mankind increasing dominion over evil.
What is this law? Let's look at it in the context of a cold. God's law says man is indestructible. He is loved and lives forever because God, his origin and Principle, is divine Love and Life. Man can never be forced out of the divine universe, nor lose the consciousness of his relation to God, for God is Mind.
Colds can be healed through the application of this law. Cold symptoms cannot foreshadow evil, for in God's eyes (in His perfect Science) there is no past, present, or future to evil. Evil, not man, is mortal.
When thought is filled with God's goodness, evil has no support and fades from our experience. Feeding consciousness with the ideas of divine Love makes mankind progressively more alive and active, both mentally and physically. Colds are not necessary, even when certain conditions or symptoms are present, but are beliefs expressed on the body that man is mortal, beliefs that can be proved false.
Christ Jesus proved the total fallaciousness of fatalism when he overcame death. He showed that this human god, death, cannot kill the real man, therefore that no other so-called powers can cause us to be sick or to lose control of ourselves in other ways. And he showed us how to gain God's government in our lives. John put it: "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." n1
n1 John 1:12, 13;
Mankind has the tools, in Jesus' teachings and the Science of Christianity, to prove this today. As Mary Baker Eddy n2 says, "Science inevitably lifts one's being higher in the scale of harmony and happiness." n3
n2 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science;
n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 60.
DAILY BIBLE VERSE To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Jude 25