Progressive choosing
People sometimes feel they're forced to choose from among varying degrees of evil. And from a human standpoint that's just the way it seems to be. A person hopes he has chosen the least evil way or the most right way. Either choice brings an uncertain mixture of right and wrong, like the tree of good and evil, which mortals are taught to live with.
After butting our heads againts less-than-right choices, sooner or later we'll all give our consent to look for something higher. Such a mental state is surely blessed. In his Sermon on the Mount, Christ Jesus tells us, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."n1 Or, as The New English Bible expresses ti, "How blest are those who know their need of God; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs."
n1 Matthew 5:3.
This attitude is a first step toward God. Recognizing God, understanding His nature, isn't done at the flick of a switch. But as we progressively learn to rely on Him in making our daily choices, we'll feel better about them -- and they'll be better for us because we'll be experiencing something of His will. Such a choice isn't a mixture of right and wrong. When it's God's choice, it's pure right.
How do we know, when faced with two choices, which one is God? To begin with , God's choice is always perfection, spiritual harmony. He doesn't choose among human solutions. But as we learn more of His nature and of His perfect will for man, we're guided to make the most appropriate choice, and it may be a path we hadn't even considered.
Jesus, faced with a crowd of hungry people, could have let them grow more hungry, or he could have sent them away to buy food. Those were the disciples' choices, and they undoubtedly thought that opting to send the people away was making the Godlike choice. Knowing that God's choice is perpetual harmony, Jesus chose a course that would never have occurred to the human mind. He fed the entire crowd with a few loaves and fishes. n2
n2 See Matthew 14:15-21.
This might be called "progressive choosing." We all can agree that the Christly way Jesus took was certainly better than either choice the disciples thought existed. God, through His unfailing law of good, provides the right answers. There's an appropriate solution for every problem, and it isn't limited to the two or more restricted choices mortal sense presents.
Because we don't have the clear, continual awareness of God's power and nearness that Jesus had, we may be slower in making the best choice; but the answer is here as surely as God is here. To see and accept it requires spiritual sense."Spiritual sense," Mary Baker Eddy n3 says, "is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God." n4
n3 Mary Baker Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.
n4 Science and Health,m p. 209.
Do we use our innate spiritual sense when facing choices in daily living? How did we choose to see the co-worker who opposed us at a meeting? How did we choose to see our children when they got out of hand? How did we choose when a temptation to sin or to give in to sickness came to us for accetable? If we chose from the limited basis of human perception, we fell short of Jesus' example.
What is the Christly way? It is to confront the problem, as Jesus did the hungry crowds, adn solve it by realizing the power and allness of God. It is to admit that the irritating co-worker or child is to spiritual sense God's ideal offspring. It is to see that the temptations we face are not of God and therefore have no power over us.
Such "progressive choosing" becomes easier, improves with practice, and moves along until it reaches the point of no dilemmas -- no frustrating choices at all. This is heaven, the state of conciousness in which God is understood as All. The choice between good and evil, health and sickness, Spirit and matter, is no more, because we fully realize that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all," n5 as Mrs. Eddy writes. Ultimately, what else is there to choose but the oneness and allness of spiritual perfection? And what could be more invigorating, more awesome, than the ongoing demonstration of perfection?
n5 ibid.,m p. 468.
DAILY BIBLE VERSE The Lord shall guide thee continually. Isaiah 58:11