Article December 6, 2010 Issue

Every step with God's leading

BY MARTHA MOFFETT

"Grab the initiative." "Take charge of your life." "Assert yourself!" "Find your own truth!" Such advice and similar sentiments are often heard in self-help courses, career counseling, and books on finding fulfillment, happiness, and success.

But what if the only sure way to realize your potential, the only sure way to fruition and fulfillment of your life purpose, is by letting God take the lead? Sound counter-intuitive? Even the best human wisdom can take you only so far. Great operas, famous novels, Greek plays, are often built around a common theme—what appears to be the great tragedy of human existence—that, in spite of people's noblest efforts, in spite of the greatest courage they can muster, tragic character flaws, hidden and unforeseen dangers, the cold hard facts of material existence, can at any moment wipe them out, and turn their best efforts into failure and loss.

Christian Science presents a radical premise that turns our understanding of the forces and conditions at work in our lives upside down, changing our concept of ourselves, restoring and redeeming us, and bringing our thought and life into fruitful, fulfilling directions. This premise is as world-reorienting as that of Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer who discovered that contrary to the best human understanding at that time, contrary to common sense perception, the sun doesn't rotate around and is not tributary to the earth.