Editorial September 17, 1984 Issue

No last straws

ALLISON W. PHINNEY, JR.

The "straw that broke the camel's back" is no more real than a mirage in the camel's native desert. The old saying—used to describe a final difficulty which, added on top of all the others, brings collapse—expresses a mental attitude or point of view rather than a basic truth. It indicates an impression of oneself or others as essentially finite and very limited in capacity.

Actually, many ordinary people, under necessity, find they can greatly exceed their own supposed limits. Sometimes they are driven to it by fear of the consequences. Others, however, have felt spiritually sustained instead of humanly driven. Prisoners of war, people on life rafts adrift at sea, those who are carrying their own burdens while caring for others, have often told of finding remarkable inner reserves when they reached out to God. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, was interested in such examples of people who had experienced this expanded capacity. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures she writes, "The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human."^{ Science and Health, p. 385.}

When we're tempted to apply the last-straw theory to ourselves, it helps to consider the nature of divine law. We can see that God, who is divine Principle, Love, doesn't arrange things the way a limited and overtaxed human being might! His law is one of omnipresent good, not some good here and therefore less there. And God's law is one of complete equivalence throughout His universe. His law is one of unlimited, omniactive good, not good that can be depleted because it has been drawn on so frequently. God's very existence means that good is not some rare and exhaustible element like beryllium or uranium but the substance of all true being, found everywhere. And divine Principle sustains and expresses this divine order with supreme intelligence and perfect equipollence.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Getting better acquainted with God and man