Article November 14, 1970 Issue

The Real Meaning of Sacrifice

THOMAS HOFFMAN

In ancient times sacrificing animals, even sometimes humans, to appease the gods was an accepted religious practice. Though civilized people have stopped human slaughter as a religious rite, today many religious people still believe that sacrificing or giving up something materially important will somehow assure them of God's blessings in the future.

Christian Science breaks with age-old superstitions and elevates the meaning of sacrifice to a much higher plane. For Christian Scientists, sacrifice is essentially the giving up of false material concepts and the replacing of them with spiritual truths. In this giving up one finds he has lost nothing real but actually has gained more and more good.

"But," someone may say, "you do give up material things—you don't smoke or drink." True, but this is the result of a change of thought. What is sacrificed is the material belief of pleasure in enslaving habits, and these habits are exchanged for a higher sense of the pleasures of goodness alone. The result is that one finds himself freed from bondage.

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