Article September 22, 1980 Issue

Reality and feeling

PAUL OSBORNE WILLIAMS

"Knowing the truth" is an expression sometimes heard among Christian Scientists. It derives from the words of Christ Jesus, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."^{John 8:32;}

A friend and I were talking about this, coming at it from different angles. He said he had found on occasion, while teaching in Sunday School, that some students thought of this knowing as only cognitive. They disassociated it from feeling, which they regarded as merely emotive, subjective, and mortal—to be avoided. I told him I had been interested in the fact that Mrs. Eddy was a lifelong student of poetry, and in the fact that poetic sensibility is generally accepted as involving both thought and feeling in its approach to understanding.

We jokingly agreed that knowing the truth was surely not like the process Mr. Spock uses in so many episodes of Star Trek. He disciplines his thinking solely to logical processes, generally to the consternation of his fellows, who desperately want him to respond with some sensitivity to the situations he is in.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

You can choose life!